In A Century
by gaelicchick
Summary: 1847: The height of the Great Famine, and Hogwarts has the lowest student population in recent memory. What's more, between starvation and emmigration, the Quidditch teams are losing players. Where to find a Seeker?
1. 1: How Many?

In A Century  
  
Chapter One: How Many?  
  
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry England June, 1847  
  
The sun was still shining as Janas Heirndall, Keeper of the Keys of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, made his way back to the castle from Hogsmeade. He had completed his last official duty of the school year moments ago when he'd secured the last student inside the Hogwarts Express and watched it pull out of the station and head south. It had always been a mostly happy time for all, the end of term; for while there were partings and goodbyes, it was also the beginning of the summer holidays, and everyone was anxious for freedom.  
  
But this year was different, and although the sun shone on it still felt as gloomy as if the sky had been blanketed with clouds.  
  
Janas sighed and tried to push the thought out of his mind for a moment. He passed through the gates and thought of swinging by the kitchens for a quick bite or two when to his surprise he saw the headmaster standing outside the main door, staring in the direction of the village.  
  
Hogwarts Headmaster Marduk Ambrose was quite possibly the tallest man Janas had ever seen, and Janas himself was no dwarf, standing a neat 6' 1". But Professor Ambrose topped him by at least 3 inches, and when he was wearing the formal, pointed wizard's hat over his coppery hair, it seemed like infinitely more.  
  
But Professor Ambrose was not wearing that hat at the moment, although he had during the final breakfast that morning. He held it in both hands now, crushing it a bit and not really noticing as his eyes followed the puff of steam that was moving steadily south.  
  
Janas was almost upon him before the headmaster noticed his presence.  
  
"Ah, Janas, everything go smoothly then?"  
  
"Yes, of course headmaster, smooth as can be."  
  
"Hard to believe the year is over, isn't it?"  
  
"Yes sir, seems this year passed faster than the last one."  
  
"Too fast," the headmaster said, more to himself than to Janas, "And they will be away too long before we see them again."  
  
It disturbed Janas to see the headmaster so powerful gloomy. "But they'll be back soon enough Professor Ambrose, you'll see. They'll be back soon enough."  
  
"I suppose you're right, Mr. Heirndall," Marduk motioned for Janas to precede him into the castle before turning and watching the Hogwarts Express move out of sight.  
  
"But how many won't be?"  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&  
  
Professor Ambrose sat at his desk, which was clear save for the school sorting hat, and two rolls of parchment, on significantly longer than the other.  
  
Before him sat his senior staff, his heads of house, all of them tense, and a bit nervous. But he was becoming used to it. It wasn't often that the headmaster of Hogwarts found himself younger than most of the teachers.  
  
For Marduk Cadmus Ambrose was the youngest headmaster Hogwarts had seen in 250 years, being granted the position at the age of 38. At 41 he was senior only to Magni Muspell, his enthusiastic Care of Magical Creatures professor, who had originally been posted at Hogwarts as a temporary position following a terrible accident in Romania 3 years ago, but who had liked it so much he had decided to stay on. Magni, who was now 29, also assisted Janas with any business in the forest, and announced all the Quidditch matches, which kept the students happy since before him the spot kept falling to a cheeky Gryffindor who gave slightly biased coverage.  
  
Marduk was tied with his Transfiguration professor and head of Hufflepuff house, Fenris Krake, who was also 41, but who had just completed his 13th year at Hogwarts, his 3rd as head of house. Fenris and Marduk had been fast friends during their student years, and while many suspected favoritism in Fenris's placement, it had actually been none of Marduk's doing at all. While he respected Fenris very much, the head of house appointment to replace retiring Care of Magical Creatures Professor Mimir, whose class would now be taught by Magni Muspell, had been pre-arranged by old headmistress Cronos prior to her retirement. Of course, Marduk had been taught by Professor Cronos himself, and he wondered if she, remembering his friendship with Fenris, had taken that into account when making the appointment.  
  
Fenris was currently lounging in an armchair, the mirth that usually surrounded his features void from his expression today. To his left sat Rosmerta Babalel, head of Ravenclaw House, and professor of Arithmancy and Advanced Astronomy. Basic Astronomy classes at all levels were taught by their Divination professor, Cassandra Sulis, who was currently visiting family and would return to school in August.  
  
Marduk tried to hide his smile, he knew exactly why Fenris was sitting next to her; for although she was 9 years his senior Rosmerta was still a very attractive woman, and though nothing would ever come of it, Fenris flirted with her at every opportunity.  
  
But there was no flirting today, and Fenris was simply trying to ease Rosmerta's fears, and the pain of the last few weeks.  
  
On Rosmerta's left, solid, strong, and a rock in the midst if the crisis was Aegis Odin, Marduk's Potion's professor and head of Gryffindor House. Odin was 57, but built as if he had been carved out of a mountain and in better shape than many men 15 years his junior. His shaggy brown hair showed no signs of gray, and the few lines on his well tanned face only added distinction. How the Potions Master managed to maintain a tan while working in perpetual darkness was a riddle many students had tried and failed to solve over the years. Marduk satisfied himself with the fact that he was ¾ of an inch taller than Odin, they had measured at the end of the year to settle a wager. Fenris had been forced to buy them all a round at the Three Broomsticks.  
  
Aegis was deep in conversation with the woman to his left, and had been since they walked in. Eirene Ashtoroth was head of Slytherin House, his Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, and his Deputy Headmistress. Marduk could recall many times in the past 3 years when he would have been lost without her. The woman was 70 if she was a day, but often had more energy than Marduk himself. That also was the source of much speculation, but when Marduk had asked her about her youthfulness, for she didn't look a day over 60, she had simply shrugged, in typical youthful fashion, and told him that the students kept her young. She and Aegis had been good friends for over 20 years, and it was a good thing, for their students were so often involved in schemes and conflicts that it would have been a very hostile working environment indeed if they did not get on well. But Eirene was universally accepted, even among the Gryffindor students, as being fair and even handed among her pupils. She was the widowed mother of four and grandmother of eight at the moment, which gave her a wonderful capacity for understanding children, something Marduk often felt that he lacked.  
  
"Professor Ambrose?" Rosmerta broke him out of his musings, "The letters don't need to go out for another month."  
  
It was a question in the form of a statement, which was often the case with the Aritmancy professor, for Professor Babalel had excellent powers of deduction, and even without them she would have been able to gather that when the headmaster called the heads of house together in June to look at the Hogwarts Prospective Student List, something important was going on.  
  
"They don't traditionally go out until the end of July, Rosemerta, that doesn't mean they don't need to go out sooner this year."  
  
Fenris nodded, "You want to send them earlier then, may I ask why?"  
  
"I want to add an addendum to the letter, not all of them, but certain letters. I want the addendum to state that these students should be ready to leave by the 7th of July."  
  
"That's in two weeks!" Aegis was normally more composed, and Fenris was as surprised as he. But Fenris knew Marduk, and he knew he did nothing without a reason.  
  
"Headmaster," Eirene added softly, "Where do you want these children to go? Are we to open the castle?"  
  
"How many children?" Rosmerta added.  
  
"I have a preliminary list here," Marduk passed the paper to Eirene, "It won't be finished until we go over the "undecided" list the hat provided this afternoon."  
  
"Undecided?" Fenris queried, this was normally a task for the headmaster and deputy headmistress, he had never seen to the arranging of the Hogwarts letters.  
  
"It's a smaller list produced after the Sorting Hat gives us the master list," Eirene explained without taking her eyes off the paper she had been handed, "It contains students that have magic enough to enter Hogwarts, but have a conflict of sort relating to their enrollment. The hat doesn't know exactly, only that these children need special consideration. Normally it is either that they are already on the rolls for Beauxbatons or Durmstrongs, they may be too young and should be deferred a year, or they may be older than 11, and for some reason are only now eligible to enter. But that last one hasn't happened in 300 years, it occurred only when a child was transferred from another school, and Hogwarts doesn't take many transfers nowadays; if we do we normally submit their names to the hat for verification, the hat doesn't provide them."  
  
Eirene's eyes passed over the list one last time before she passed it to Professor Odin. "Marduk, what do you want to do with them?"  
  
Ambrose leaned back in his chair. "We already have a list of wizarding families who offered their homes at the end of term. You know as well as I that less than ½ of the students who were offered places took them. I intend to send those students, and the names on the list, the amended letter. If there aren't places enough among the current list of volunteers I have plenty of friends at the ministry who have offered their homes. My mother herself wrote me only last week to remind me that no one was staying in my old bedroom."  
  
Rosmerta handed the list to Fenris, "If they didn't take the offer at the end of term, what makes you think the older students will take it now?"  
  
"They won't have a choice. I am considering this a mandatory part of the Hogwarts curriculum. If they won't take it out of charity we can find them some sort of job at the Ministry to earn their board, but accepting is absolutely non-negotiable if they want to attend Hogwarts."  
  
"Marduk-" Professor Ashtoroth began, but Marduk avoided the sympathy in her tone by presenting the smaller list from his desk.  
  
"I wanted you all here today because you are the ones who will be in charge of these students, should they be admitted and I intend to admit almost all of them, so I only thought it right that you were all here. It's not very long. Eirene, you have the lists sent by Beauxbatons and Durmstrongs?"  
  
Eirene nodded, "I promised them a complete master list by this afternoon so they could double check," she warned.  
  
"We'll have it for them."  
  
They went through, checking name after name. Those names that were already on the confirmed lists from the other schools received a sharp tap from Ambrose's wand, the name disappeared, the scroll he was holding rolled up at the end as it shortened, and a check appeared next to the name on the corresponding school's list. If a student was approved to enter, for example, Icarus Argo, who was only 10 but who would be 11 on the 13th of November, Ambrose would again tap the paper sharply with his wand, the name would appear on the Hogwarts master list, which would uncurl a bit as it grew longer, and the name would vanish from the undecided list.  
  
"McCarthy, Fianna, another 10 year old." Eirene read.  
  
"When's the birthday?" Rosmerta responded automatically.  
  
"30th of December."  
  
Aegis whistled, "Cutting it close, might be better to wait a year, she'd be closer in age to her classmates."  
  
"What's the address?" Marduk had asked the question after every name on the list.  
  
Eirene tapped the name with her wand, and in bright green, looping writing, the address appeared below the name.  
  
"Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland."  
  
"Is it a wizarding family?"  
  
Rosmerta checked her lists, "No, sir, there are no known wizarding families living in Skibbereen."  
  
"She comes."  
  
"Sir-"  
  
"She comes! It's Skibbereen for Merlin's-"  
  
Marduk was silenced by an icy tinkling sound, all eyes turned to the master list, which lay next to the hat before Marduk on his desk. As they watched, the long scroll rolled a little tighter. A name had been erased.  
  
Marduk curled is hand into a fist, counted to 10, and then slammed it down on the arm of his chair. "Damn!"  
  
Fenris swore under his breath, Aegis snapped his quill in two, Rosmerta let out a shaky sigh. But Eirene's eyes were on the headmaster.  
  
"You can't save all of Ireland, Marduk, you know that. The Ministry's tried all they can but with the cholera and the typhus-"  
  
"That list hasn't left my sight all week, Eirene, and that's the 6th one we've lost; in a week, and just among the incoming first years. I will not sit here and wait for two months for the sake of tradition while my students are dying. Every name on this list that isn't already going to Beauxbatons or Durmstrong is coming to Hogwarts, I don't care of they're 6! And every muggle-born Irish student we have is spending the rest of their summer in safety if I have to tie them down and bring them here myself."  
  
No one said anything; there was nothing to say, they all agreed with him. They were all silently praying for their own students, hoping they all returned in September, knowing that they all probably wouldn't.  
  
Marduk sighed and took the list that was passed to him by Professor Ashtoroth. He smiled down at the name of "McCarthy Fianna" before tapping it with his wand, watching it disappear from one list, and hearing the master list unroll as another name was added, replacing the one that had been lost.  
  
"Well my dear, it's your lucky day."  
  
He looked up at his staff and tried to smile. "The letters go out tonight."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&& Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland 6 July, 1847  
  
Fianna McCarthy had not had any intention of being in this part of town today. As she had stepped out the door that morning to say farewell to the village of Skibbereen, where she had lived her entire life, her mother had warned her especially to stay clear of the cemetery. Fianna had every intention of following the river, and so had not the least intention of disobeying. It wasn't her fault that her cousin Eamon happened upon her and dragged her into town, and then back to his house to say goodbye to her aunt and cousins. From Eamon's house the fastest way home went by the cemetery, and it was getting dark. Not that Fianna, a strong lass of ten years would ever be afraid of the dark, mind you, but the fastest way back was the fastest way back, and so she set off down the road.  
  
As soon as she crested the hill and looked down she was grateful for the night that was sweeping in, and it took all her mettle not to turn tail and run back toward her aunt's. Eamon would never let her hear the end of it, and she was being teased enough as it was on account of her going off to school in England. She set her chin and tried to look at the road ahead, or the sky, or the trees, anything but the mass grave pit that was being dug and filled to her left. It wasn't that she had no respect for the dead, but Fianna had seen enough of it. The town of Skibbereen had been one of the hardest hit in all of Ireland by the Great Famine, and Fianna didn't think her spirit could take seeing anymore dead bodies, especially when she knew she would recognize the faces.  
  
This was why she had to leave, her mother had told her. This was why, despite all the talk of wizardry and witchcraft, that letter had been a message from God, calling her away to save her from the darkness that had settled over Eire.  
  
Fianna felt like she was running away. For was she not abandoning her family to starvation to live in comfort, in England of all places, while the rest of Ireland suffered?  
  
Her mother had reminded her that a goodly percentage of the village that had not been taken to God had left already, just in the other direction, and she couldn't deny the thousands who were headed to America. And the McCarthy's were a hearty bunch, her mother had assured her. With the men off to the city to earn money, there would be enough to get by, and it would be easier with one less mouth to feed. They should thank their lucky stars that it seemed this school didn't want them to pay for tuition or anything at all, really.  
  
It still felt like running away, and Fianna was heartsick at not just the thought of leaving, but of who might not be here, for one reason or another, when she returned.  
  
She quickened her steps, which did not constitute running, and hastened home, for the last meager meal she would share with her family for a long time to come.  
  
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Dublin, Ireland 7 July, 1847  
  
Nora Morrigan checked one last time that she had everything. The little bit of paper with the name and address, the directions to and from the portkey, a second wrap in case the weather turned nasty. She pulled on her cloak, she was all set.  
  
No, she thought again, she wasn't, she was missing one thing. Her son.  
  
"Finn!"  
  
She swept out of the kitchen with determination. The boy was not going to slip past her this time.  
  
"Finn!"  
  
She opened the door to the broom closet and smiled. He hadn't gotten to his broom yet, escape was impossible. She picked it up and hid it in the closet behind the mops and pails, a place she wasn't sure Finn even knew existed.  
  
"Finbar Michael Morrigan!"  
  
She swept up the narrow staircase from the kitchen and poked her head into the first bedroom on the right. Her eldest daughter was seated at a vanity, experimenting with ways to put her hair up. She read the charm aloud from a small book, then tapped her head with her wand, watching with satisfaction as her golden blond tresses arranged themselves in a perfect twist.  
  
Nora smiled, and unconsciously patted her own hair, the same color as Cordelia's, although now kept that way with the help of Madam Marzipan's Magically Natural Hair Tonic.  
  
"Cordy, have you seen him?"  
  
"He tore by this way not five minutes ago, headed for the front stairs, did you hide the broom?"  
  
Nora nodded, "Of course."  
  
Cordy grinned, "Then he'll either try to get Caitlin's or hide on the roof."  
  
"Where is your sister? Did she degnome the garden like I asked?"  
  
Cordelia tossed her head in exasperation. "Up a tree probably. I heard some shouting an hour ago, so the garden may be clear. But the post brought another one of her books and my guess is she'll be buried in it all afternoon, in the garden most likely as she complains that these charms leave the room smelling like a house of ill repute."  
  
Nora sighed, her middle child's combination of coltishness and pedagogy was endearing to her, but occasionally exasperating to her stylish older sister. She was also certain that "house of ill repute" had not been Caitlin's choice of words, and she thanked Merlin for the millionth time that Cordelia seemed to be blessed with more than her fair share of serenity and patience.  
  
She noted that her daughter was wearing her good blouse and nice skirt.  
  
"Is Brian calling later?"  
  
Cordelia nodded, "He said he'd come round for tea. We thought we might take a look at his new broom?" There was a pleading look in her eyes. Cordelia may have been the most ladylike of any female in the Morrigan clan, including her mother, but it was impossible to have grown up in the household without a strong love of Quidditch,  
  
Nora tried to keep her face stern, knowing full well her husband would murder her if she backed down on his rule. "You may look at it all you like my dear, but you know very well about how your father feels. You'll not be getting on a broomstick with any young man until you're 18."  
  
Cordelia recognized the look in her mother's eyes, and cursed that school was so far away, when it was always easy to slip out for a ride. "Aye, I understand. You best be after Finn if you don't want to be late."  
  
Nora smiled and headed down the hall to her bedroom, where she could see the back garden from her window. A booted leg dangled from the branches of the large tree in the center. Caitlin, reading no doubt, and no doubt comfortable up there, though Nora knew not how. The stockings indicated that Caitlin was at least wearing a skirt, though her mother winced at the stains and tears that would result from climbing about in trees. She then thought the better of shouting down to her daughter, she was lucky Caitlin wasn't wearing trousers, as she was want to do; the garden walls were not so high that the neighbors wouldn't see, and they found the Morrigans queer enough as it were.  
  
As she was watching an apple fell from above passed her window. A partially eaten apple.  
  
Finn, she thought with triumph. She stuck her head and shoulders out of the window and peered up.  
  
"Finbar Morrigan you come inside this instant and get your cloak! We have an errand to run!"  
  
Silence.  
  
"I know you are up there Finn I saw the apple, come down."  
  
Silence again.  
  
"Finbar, so help me, I WILL destroy your precious broomstick if you do not come down this instant. You k now your da thinks you don't spend enough time on your studies to have earned it anyway!"  
  
"Ma don't!"  
  
With a scurry and scramble that had her heart in her throat, though she'd seen him do it a thousand times, her 12 year old son came scrambling down the drain pipe, dropping the last heart stopping 5 feet to the ground and springing up to his feet.  
  
"Ma, come on!"  
  
"Inside you miscreant, now!"  
  
Sullen and indignant, she watched him stomp into the kitchen before pulling her head in, but not before giving the McAllisters maid, who was next door hanging out the second story window staring at them, a hearty wave before pulling it shut.  
  
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"I still don't see why I have to come," Finn grumbled as he trudged along the country road behind his mother.  
  
"Because you're the only one of my children near her own age, it'll do the little lamb good, put her mind at ease."  
  
"But I'm older than her," Finn stood up straight, "She's just a firstie."  
  
"You're only 12 boy-o, Caitlin's 15 and Cordelia's 17, so that makes you the closest in age."  
  
"How old is she?"  
  
"Let's see here. ah, she's 10."  
  
"10! She's a baby."  
  
"Poor little baby," Mrs. Morrigan said to herself as she looked around at the outskirts of Skibbereen before turning her attention back to her son.  
  
"You will be a polite and courteous young man or I will tan your hide. Her family's Muggles after all, so this will be quite bewildering for her."  
  
"She'll probably cry," Finn scoffed.  
  
"Look around you boy-o, if she's managed to survive all of this, I'm betting she's a lot stronger than you think."  
  
Finn looked at the dingy dwellings, many looked abandoned, until you passed close enough to see that there were people living in them. Finn thought it had been pleasanter when he thought no one was still living in such a place.  
  
Nora watched her son's dark head take in his surroundings. The wizards of Ireland had not been terribly affected by the Great Famine that had plagued the nation. Her husband Douglas and eldest son Fergus both had jobs with the Ministry, the Morrigan family had not been farmers in more than a century. They lived in a good part of Dublin, and at the moment were kept safe from the diseases that were sweeping the country. All the same, when the children went back to school she and Douglas planned on closing up the Dublin house, and moving to live with his brother and family in England for the winter. Nora just couldn't imagine being alone with the bleakness every day. She was glad that Finn had this chance to see what was really happening to his country, for many Hogwarts students were affected, and he should understand how.  
  
He seemed to understand that, for when the blue eyes returned to hers, they no longer contained the insolence and trademark Morrigan stubbornness that they had held before.  
  
"How much further?"  
  
"She's not far outside the village, should be just over this hill. They wanted the portkey well out of town, so no one would see. I told them we didn't mind a little walk, the weather's lovely."  
  
The weather was overcast and looked like it was going to rain any second, but Finn said nothing.  
  
They crested the hill, and Finn could see the town and the river below him, a ways off yet. But closer by, standing near the road in front of a small cottage was a tiny red headed girl, and she had a bag in her hands.  
  
"That her?"  
  
Nora squinted and nodded, "I believe Headmaster Ambrose instructed them to wait by the road, he seemed to think the faster this was done the better."  
  
Finn thought Professor Ambrose was right. They approached the cottage and Nora smiled broadly.  
  
"Why, you must be Fianna, I'm thinking?"  
  
The girl nodded, "Fianna McCarthy, m'am, pleased to meet you."  
  
Nora beamed. "I'm Mrs. Morrigan, and this is my son, Finbar."  
  
"Finn," he corrected.  
  
The little girl nodded and smiled. "Thank you for helping to come get me, I could have managed, but the letter said-"  
  
"Oh don't you worry your little head about it, this is how the headmaster wants it. Now, if you'd like to go and say your farewells to your family, we can wait here."  
  
Fianna turned back to look at the cottage, then shook her head, "I can't now, they've gone."  
  
Mrs. Morrigan sucked in her breath, "Oh my dear I'm -"  
  
Fianna understood and laughed, clear and bright, "Oh no! No no no, they've just gone to church, I said my farewells a few minutes ago. There was a funeral today they needed to attend."  
  
Finn decided he liked her laugh. "I'm sorry, was it a member of the family?"  
  
Fianna turned to him and nodded. "Second cousin on my mother's side. Shall we go?"  
  
Nora nodded, "Do you have a trunk dear?"  
  
Fianna looked down at the tatty carpetbag at her feet, and shook her head.  
  
Nora took her hand and led her off, "Well, I daresay they'll get you settled and squared away in London. Bring the bag, Finn. Now my dear, I need to explain to you a few things, first off, I don't suppose you've ever heard of a portkey before?"  
  
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	2. 2: Cecily Craven's Disappointment

Chapter 2: In Which Cecily Craven Is Doomed to Be Disappointed

"When are they getting here?"

"Not till this afternoon, your father and Danny will be bringing them home from work along with Kieran and Douglas."

"How many?"

"I can't say for certain, dear, but I can't imagine more than 3 or 4, even with the extra cots, we have limited space in here."

"And you're sure you don't know ANY of their names?"

"No."

"Not any?"

"My dear, if you are so clumsily trying to ask me whether Bridget O'Toole is among them then the answer is no. The same as it was this morning, and yesterday evening at dinner."

"But, she HAS to come, doesn't she? Because the headmaster said that they all had to go and-"

"I am sure that Bridget is being quite properly looked after, but that does not mean she will be spending any time here."

"Are there at least any GIRLS among this bunch?"

Eileen Craven thought somewhat despondently of the state of her parlor once her husband, eldest son, 7th year Kieran Riley and 5th year Douglas Douglas had finished stamping the floo powder off their cloaks and boots at the end of their day. She thought of the massive amounts of food that were required to feed those bottomless pits they had the nerve to call stomachs. And she thought of the noise, sweet merciful Merlin, the noise...

"Yes my dear, a few girls would be nice."

A bell rang in the front hall.

"I'll get it!"

"Cecily, please have a care for your grandmother's china, you're meant to inherit that if you don't destroy every piece before dinner."

Cecily quickly placed the cup and saucer she had knocked to the floor back on the table and dashed for the door.

She tried not to let her face drop too much when she saw who had come to call.

"Oh, hello Mrs. O'Fallon, hello Dylan."

"Good afternoon Cecily, is your mother at home?"

"She's in the parlor, we were just sitting down to tea. Come in, would you care to stay for some?"

Please God let her be in a hurry.

Kate O'Fallon chuckled silently to herself, and smiled in appreciation of Cecily's deeply ingrained sense of company manners. Despite the cheerful facade she was perfectly well aware that that child would sooner offer herself to a Norwegian Ridgeback for breakfast than sit down to tea with her Dylan. Their mutual hatred was a frequent topic of conversation between herself and Eileen once the children were away at school, for, indeed, they had been the most bitter of rivals during their school years. In fact they had been archenemies until one fated day in 5th year potions, when their misflung hexes had resulted in mutual confinement to the hospital wing for 6 weeks, completely bald and without the use of thumbs. They had been fast friends ever since.

With a smile of fond remembrance Kate patted her chestnut curls and shook her head.

"No dear, not today. I just came by to drop off a few tidbits we had in the kitchen, from what I hear you're feeding an army around here lately."

"And it's getting larger by the hour," Eileen sailed in from the parlor, handing the basket from Kate to Cecily and kissing Kate on the cheek. "Why hello, Dylan, my you've grown this summer haven't you?"

Dylan, swallowed his frown and smiled, "Hello Mrs. Craven." Mrs. Craven had been telling him that he'd grown every sumer for as long as he could remember. Fortunately, his mother and Cecily's began rattling on, as they always did, and he wasn't required to say anything further.

"Kate dear, there's enough in here to feed us for a week! You didn't have to do this!"

"Well, I felt I ought to, seeing as we couldn't take any students in ourselves, poor little dears. We talked about it of course, Patrick and I, but Patrick's mother and father are already staying with us, and his sister's family as well, just until they sell the Dublin house, they're moving to Sussex, did you hear?"

"Maggie's going to Sussex, truly? Well it can't have been her idea, how on earth did Edgar manage to get her to go? And I thought he was pleased with the Dublin house?"

"Oh it's not that really, I think they planed to move just as soon as her parents were settled in with us, the Dublin house is getting a bit snug, and for a family of five it just won't do-"

"Five! I hadn't hear about THAT at all! I think you better come tell me all about it. Cecily, take Mrs. O'Fallon's wrap dear. And Dylan, yes you just leave those parcels there and come in and have some tea."

At that moment the unspeakable tortures of Azkaban would have been as welcome as a picnic by the sea in June to Cecily Craven and Dylan O'Fallon. The last time their mothers had sat down to tea the event had lasted 4 hours, by which time it had grown dark and Dylan and his mother had stayed for supper.

Oh if only her father would bring home a girl!

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It was a busy afternoon at the Ministry of Magic. First there was that unfortunate incident involving the Experimental Potions Department's untimely spillage of a new low viscosity broom wax in the main entry hall, which, coupled with last week's memo to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department about the sovereign importance of punctuality, had resulted in several eager workers sent to the infirmary at 7 in the morning with assorted broken bones, bruises, and concussions.

The timing of the whole affair was most unfortunate, as just before noon an alarm came into the office that somehow a teapot which an employee had enchanted to sing, dance and spray lukewarm water around the table, "Just a present for my niece, that's all", had been left in a carriage, recovered by muggles, and soaked an entire assemblage of the Ladies for Christian Decency and Decorum Society in a VERY good part of town. With all the more eager and more adept members of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department still in the infirmary, an assembly of more recent staffers had been sent out to remedy the situation.

All appeared to go well, until it became apparent that instead of administering a memory charm to cause all the ladies to forget about the singing, dancing, spraying teapot, poor Mr. Levys, who had been late to work on account of a headache for which, it would later be revealed, his wife had administered far too much tonic, instead cast a charm that resulted in the wives of several of London's most prominent bankers and lawyers to believe that they WERE teapots. Not just any teapots, of course, but singing, dancing, spraying teapots that quite overwhelmed the wizards and eagerly scattered throughout London.

It had required a second alarm and every spare wizard there was to be had to hunt down all of them, and it was terribly hard to keep it all discreet, especially as a very enthusiastic four, having shed by now most of their clothes, or "tea cozies" as it were, had taken it into their heads to dance a tarantella around the statue of Lord Nelson, spitting all the while, whilst their fifth compatriot sang a sort of sea chanty that she had no business either knowing or understanding and which, had the other ladies noted it, would had drawn several serious challenges as to the validity of her pedigree.

Considering the danger of letting the novices perform any more memory charms, orders had been to seek and capture; the plan being to collectively deal with the women back in the safety of the Ministry where they were no longer arousing the public's attention.

That brought them to the third exploit of the afternoon. The Experimental Potions Department, being in a hurry to further explore the potential of their VERY effective low viscosity lubricant, had decided that rather than clean it up properly, a good drying charm of some sort ought to be enough to eliminate the danger and leave the floor looking oh so shiny. However, as they would only discover in later experiments, a drying charm, when applied to the experimental low viscosity lubricant, had somewhat the opposite affect, and turned the potion into nothing more than a very, very strong glue. Everyone having fled the building to deal with nearly naked tarantella dancers in the heart of London, this was only discovered when the ladies were brought back in, attempted to cross the main hall, and found themselves rooted to the spot. Their captors managed to escape by stepping out of their shoes, but the women, having shed their expensive leather footwear ages ago (for teapots do not wear shoes) were for all intensive purposes, immobile.

So it was that when Minister of Magic Wendall Wentworth Westing returned to his office following a rather long and boring trip to France, he was greeted by the sight of some thirty-odd middle-aged scantily-clad VERY rich muggle women expectorating profusely, singing bawdy songs at the top of their lungs, and twisting their bodies in a rather unorthodox fashion with their feet seemingly rooted to the floor of his lobby. Taken as a whole he found it much more interesting than listening to Minister Jacques 'Le Fop' Portiscue expound on the finer points of kestral grooming. He nodded to the very flustered heads of several departments, skirted the lake of glue, and headed up the stairs to his office and his brandy.

He found his Associate Minister of Magic seated at his desk, reading four feet of parchment and taking notes at the same time.

"Good afternoon Sigmund, everything still spinning?"

Sigmund Belsch was tall, wiry man whose blond hair was not going gray, it was going white. He stood up immediately and stepped aside with a little bow to allow the Wendall to sit down.

"Yes, sir. I have notes for you here on these proposals, as well as the minutes of the last few sub-committee meetings."

"I'm sure those were as stimulating as ever."

Sigmund smiled, "Indeed, sir."

"I hate to say it, but I would almost welcome them after three days in the French Ministry. 'Why say it in five words when fifty will do' seems to be their motto."

"Was the visit productive sir?"

"Yes, once we had danced around the subject long enough Portiscue was quite ready to concede that they had been cheating us abominably for the past 10 years with regards to the import tax. I rather wish we had danced around it a little longer, for once that business was done I was punished with a VERY lengthy description of French kestral breeding. Have you ever wondered at the fertilizer content of 19 kilograms of dung from a pregnant kestral, Mr. Belsch?"

"No, sir, can't say that I have."

"Neither did I. Miss Strong? Miss Strong could you come in here? Thank you, Miss Strong I would like you to ban everyone from the office today who plans on bringing up the subject of kestrals. And I would like you to move that painting in the outer office to somewhere else in the building."

"But there are no kestrals in that painting, sir."

"No, but there is a rather large paddock, and you know Sir Thomas' sense of humor. He'll have heard all of this by now and go bring a friend from a painting somewhere in the Agriculture Department and there they'll be, kestrals! Thousands of them, all staring at me! Make my excuses to Sir Thomas, if you'd be so kind Sigmund, and then Hillary may move him somewhere else. Try the atrium; there was a most interesting sight there this morning. I am correct in assuming that the dancing, singing women in the ingenious attire were not put there for my benefit? Some sort of 'welcome home' present, perhaps?"

Hillary Strong blushed to the roots of her black, impeccably styled hair and Sigmund coughed.

"You are correct, sir."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear it. Have some of those summer employees of ours help you with Sir Thomas, Miss Strong, and if he is the least bit ungentlemanly you may hang him next to the portrait of Lady Goldenblatt in the sixth floor nursery. Oh, and check to see if they have quite cleaned all the vomit off her from last week. Thank you, Miss Strong."

Sigmund smiled to himself. The sixth floor nursery was a day care of sorts for the children of ladies volunteering with the Witches Aid Society. The head of the society at the moment had an absolutely terrifying three year old, and it was the greatest fear of the wizards of the Endangered Magical Beasts and Birds Department, located just down the hall, that someday young Typhon would get loose and wander down their way. As a result the nursery was an absolute fortress, with no one to mind the children but a senile retired Hogwarts school nurse and the portrait of Lady Lucille Goldenblatt, who never tired of yelling at small children. She enjoyed her position, being a hearty woman who didn't mind a little tear here and there, but being sentenced to the nursery was the nightmare of most all the other paintings in the Ministry. Sigmund was quite sure that last remark about the vomit had been purely for Sir Thomas' benefit, to remind him what might happen should he misbehave again.

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"He certainly is heavy, isn't he?"

"Ugh, could stand to lose a stone or two, that's for sure."

There came an indignant muffling from under the canvas.

"Now watch your tongue Sir Thomas, there are ladies present. The sixth floor is not so far away, you know."

Silence.

Hilary Strong smiled and walked sedately along as the two boys hefted Sir Thomas' portrait down the stairs to the atrium. The teapot ladies remained were they had been, just as loud and eager as ever. There was now the added element of several dozen Ministry workers, all arguing over whose responsibility the women were now. The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department was claiming that, seeing as the teapot itself had already been neutralized, they were no longer involved. The task of fixing the ladies and returning them to their homes was clearly the responsibility of the Misguided Muggle Management Department. However, the MMMD's wanted nothing to do with the mess, saying they only had jurisdiction over muggles who mistakenly wandered into wizard-intensive areas, like Quidditch pitches and the dragon reserves, or the occasional muggle whose pursuit of alcohol has lead them into the Leaky Cauldron. Since these ladies had clearly not come to this position of their own free will, this was obviously a job for the SPCM. But the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Muggles had not the least intention of taking the job, theirs was a legislative function, not to mention that attitudes towards muggles being what they were the society only had 3 paid employees. Someone had come up with the idea that it all ought to be dropped in the lap of the chaps down in the Experimental Potions Department, but no one had seen hide nor hair of them since the glue incident, their doors were locked, and there was a strong suspicion that they had every one of them fled the city. Hilary smiled again, Sir Thomas would be delighted.

"Just hang him there boys, across from Lord Abernathy."

Kieran steadied the painting as Douglas helped heave it into place.

"Feast you eyes, Sir Thomas," he declared as he pulled off the canvas with a flourish.

Hilary had worked seven feet from Sir Thomas for the past five years. She had never seen him speechless before.

"Tommy? Tommy my boy, good to see you! Well, pity you couldn't have got here sooner, you've missed quite a morning."

Sir Thomas brightened. "Desmond, it's been decades since we've been on the same floor!"

"Well, you know, you make one slightly indecent joke about the Minister's wife..."

Hilary rolled her eyes, "Come along then boys."

"Where are we going now?"

"To the sixth floor."

Kieran and Douglas stopped dead in their tracks.

"Don't look at me like that, I promised Minister Westing I would check on Lady Goldenblatt. And I'll be needing you two to relieve Agnes."

"Who?"

"Agnes Donnelly, from Belfast, I believe, she's been assisting old whats- her-name in the nursery and she hasn't had a lunch break yet."

"Please Miss Strong, don't make us go in there, we have too much to live for!"

"Look at it this way, at least there's two of you. She's been on her own all day, poor thing. Besides, we have a few more coming through today, one of the houses that was going to take them in has an infestation of salamander-mites and apparently could burn up at any moment, so I need her to help me sort them all out. Last time we made modifications to Professor Ambrose's arrangements we sent too many to one house and they were sleeping in the bathtubs!"

"I'll sleep in the bathtub if I don't have to go into the nursery."

Hilary put her hands on her hips, "You're good boys, and I'm fond of both of you, and I believe every person is entitled to their own choice. So, you can choose to help out in the nursery, or take the second option."

The boys heaved a sigh of relief.

"The second option is cleaning out the pens in the infirmary of the Endangered Magical Beasts and Birds Department, I've been told they are getting quite foul."

Kieran pouted, "That's not fair."

Hilary tossed her head. "I've spent the past five years working seven feet from the 200 year old portrait of a wizard who, among other accomplishments, holds the standing record for longest conversation carried on with HIMSELF. We'll talk about fair another time. You aren't particularly attached to those clothes are you?"

As the boys trudged back up the stairs to almost certain death and or dismemberment Douglas could hear Sir Thomas whisper, "By the way, Desi old pal, tell Edgar I won't be needing those kestrals after all."

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Agnes Donnelly considered herself a patient girl. As the oldest of 9 children and the roommate of two girls with no siblings at all, she was experienced in handling childish behavior. What she had not been prepared for, however, was the Devil himself. However, coming from a very Catholic village, Agnes was well schooled in how to handle the devil, and after three hours of torment, had succeeded in beating him at his own game. All it had required was a quick message to the Experimental Potions Department.

So it was that when Hilary Strong knocked on the nursery door, it was a very calm and serene Agnes who opened the small peephole.

"We've come to give you a lunch break Agnes," Hilary said.

"How nice, I was beginning to think I was going to have to steal some of Arthur Lawrence's juice and crackers. Go ahead, Ill be just a minute."

Hilary began to unfasten the 6 deadbolts located at various heights on the outside of the door, a recent addition to the nursery since the arrival of Typhon. In response she heard Agnes dialing the combinations of 5 locks and manually unlocking 4 more, then heaving up the port challis as Hillary opened the solid oak door.

The nursery was in a remarkable state of cleanliness, in fact it was damn near pristine. Toys were lined up neatly on the shelves, the self rocking horse was snoozing contentedly in the corner, its bandaged foreleg appeared to be healing quite nicely. Old WhatsHerName was dozing in a chair and Lady Goldenblatt appeared to be knitting a pastel colored straight jacket serenely in her frame. The carpet appeared to be the same color it had been this morning, and the walls were, remarkably enough, completely intact.

Douglas and Kieran paused in the doorway, staring about in wonder. Hilary turned to Agnes.

"Um, Agnes, dear, where are the children?"

"Playing."

"Where?"

At that moment a small cracker landed on the carpet. Agnes spied it, sighed, and picked it up. "Arthur, I told you that snack time was over, and I meant it."

"Sorry Miss Donnelly."

Taking a deep breath, Hilary lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

40 eyes stared back at her in wild delight.

"Agnes..."

"It's quite safe Miss Strong, I assure you. The chaps from the Experimental Potions Department tested the release charm on Typhon first, just before they all left for Kent, didn't they Typhoid my boy?"

"Yup," the answer came from a three year old who was plastered back against the ceiling, with only his head free to move about. Other children were suspended by only their feet, clinging to one another to stay closer to the ceiling, or swinging back and forth by their ankles like trained monkeys.

"They're working on making it a wee less strong, enough so they can climb about a bit more. However they seem quite content just to hang around."

"How long have they been up there?"

"Oh, an hour or two. Everyone having fun?"

"Yes!"

"Fingers?"

"Ten!"

"Toes?"

"Ten!"

"Eyeballs?"

"Two!"

"See," Agnes shrugged, "They're fine. As easy as lambs."

Hilary swallowed. "If their mothers-"

"Want to know where to get a bottle, just tell them the boys down in Ex. Pot.'s are MORE then willing to offer them one when they return from the country, and they're willing to offer Typhon's mother a barrel. What's for lunch?"

"Well, boys, it appears you're off the hook. Lady Goldenblatt, you'll be all right there?"

The old dowager look up from her knitting and smiled. "They cleaned me up just fine dear, and I daresay the little chandeliers will keep for a few more hours. Nature may be pressing if they're not let down by three or so, if you know what I mean?"

Agnes nodded, "Nurse, um, what's her name? She knows the release charm, if they need it badly enough, they'll be able to wake her up."

"Lovely to meet you my dear."

"Have a nice afternoon Lady Goldenblatt."

Kieran lowered the port challis and Hilary refastened the outer locks while Douglas swept Agnes down the hall on his arm. Seeing as she had saved Kieran and himself from almost certain death at the hands of an unrestrained criminally demented three year old, from that day forward she was looked upon as their own personal messiah, her name was immortalized in song, and she never had to pay for a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks ever again.

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"But how on earth did you get them up there?"

"It's a lot like de-gnoming a garden, actually... No, Tilly, she can't go to the Craven's, they've got four now as it is."

"Do they, oh you're right, I missed that one."

"You didn't bring your glasses."

"I forgot them."

"You're a rotten liar, and as we have told you time and again, look rather distinguished in your glasses."

"You're just being nice."

"Well if you mind it so much I'll stop, and tell you quite frankly that you look most un-charming squinting like that."

"You're sure there's no more room at the Craven's?"

"They already have Kieran and Douglas, quite charming lads, aren't they? And they are getting Connor and Sean this afternoon."

"I just thought, all those boys..."

"Well, they'll keep each other company, won't they?

"It says here the Craven's were willing to take six."

"And there is a note here from Professor Ambrose that their household can't possibly take more than four. Mrs. Craven's just a soft touch, that's all."

"I bet she won't be once she sees how much food 14 year old boys consume."

"She's raised one of her own, I'm sure she has the general idea."

"All right then, what about these two?"

"Two?"

"O'Toole and a first year, McCarthy."

"There's room at the Crawford's."

"How many have they got?"

"Just one, Emmet McDermott, aren't he and Bridget both in Hufflepuff?"

"Ravenclaw, I think, and different years, Emmet's in my little brother's year."

"Speaking of the Bruce, how's he doing? Did all the bones heal straight?"

"Straight enough, and he's doing fine, from what I've seen of him. He spends all day running wild with Eric Redding, so he's hardly ever home."

"That's convenient, isn't it?"

"Terribly. So O'Toole and McCarthy can go to the Crawford's?"

"Yes. I think..."

"Aggie..."

"Let me check the lists ONE more time... Don't frown that way Tilly, it makes your face look crooked."


	3. 3: The First Years

Chapter Three: The First Years

"Do I really have to go?"

"What a question, of course you're going."

"Can't I wait a year...or four?"

"I couldn't wait for my first year at Hogwarts, it was the most exciting day of my life, and just you wait it will be exactly the same for you. Now, where are your gloves?"

"It won't be just the same."'

"The grey ones dear...what was that?"

"I said it won't be just the same for me as it was for you."

"Did you pack them in your trunk? How do you mean dear?"

"You're father wasn't the Minister of Magic!"

"Neither is yours, pet, ah, here they are. Don't dawdle so Willimena, do you want to miss the train?"

"Yes."

"Darling-"

"It's going to be just like at primary school. They'll all hate me, and they'll tease me, and I won't have any real friends."

"You have to-"

"I want to go to the muggle academy!"

"They teach absolutely nothing but nonsense at that school, it's not an institute of learning at all. Besides, how would it look if the granddaughter of the Minister of Magic didn't attend Hogwarts? Do you want them to think you're a squib?"

"They can think whatever they like, as long as they leave me alone!"

"You're cousin has had a fabulous time."

"That's because he's a lot bigger than I am, and he's had a lot of practice at pummeling the people who make fun of him." Willimena didn't add that her older cousin , Wendy Wilbur Westing, didn't get bugged about being the grandson of the Minister of Magic because people were usually too preoccupied tormenting him about his first name to pay any attention to his last.

"Well then you will just have to let him teach you."

"So you think it would be better for me to be found brawling in the halls of Hogwarts than attending a muggle school?"

"Students have been brawling in the halls of Hogwarts for generations, its a time honored tradition and completely respectable under the right circumstances. Hiding from what you are, however, is nothing but cowardice. I don't care who your grandfather is, you are MY daughter, and you will not be a coward. Now put your gloves on and lets be on our way young lady."

Willimena Wisteria Westing, the granddaughter of Minister Wendall Westing, had no choice. When her mother said march, you marched. Silently cursing herself for not escaping through the window that morning, she collected her gloves from where she had hidden them under the mattress and followed her mother and the house elf with her trunk out the door and into the London morning.

&

Sally Murgatroyd, on the other hand, had been up since dawn. Face washed, dress and robes pressed, her hair plaited to perfection down her back, she looked the picture of an eager young witch. This only served to thoroughly annoy her two older brothers when they stumbled out of bed and down to breakfast, after their mother had come into their rooms and physically removed their sheets, then sent in the house elves to dump cold water over them. Rupert and Despard had never been what you could call "morning people."

"God's teeth, how long have you been up?" Rupert growled, seeing Sally sitting in front of a now clean plate, serenely sipping tea while he attempted to bolt down toast.

"Hurry up you two! I'll not have Sally miss the train on her first time to Hogwarts!"

Their mother had been bustling about since about an hour after Sally woke up. Not because there was a terrible lot to do, but this was Mrs. Murgatroyd's first day as an empty-nest parent, and she knew of no other way to handle this serious accusation of age than to bustle as much as possible while her children were still at home. She had moved the trunks about in the front hall four times, made Sally recheck her packing list three times, and was starting on her second pot of coffee.

Despard , on the other hand, merely rolled his eyes. "Oh, you're eager now, just wait until you blow something off in potions class, then you'll wish you hadn't been so hasty. Then you'll wish you were back home, learning baby steps in primary and sleeping in till a decent hour."

Sally grinned and shook her head. "No I wouldn't."

Despard turned to his younger brother and shook his head. "We went seriously wrong with her somewhere Rupert, I just can't figure out where."

"Maybe it was reconsidering selling her to that traveling circus when she was two."

"Possibly."

"Boys!" Their mother stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. Sally swung her feet in excitement, too happy to take any notice of her brother's teasing.

"You were talking to Mrs. Logan, and it was hot, and the fellow said he would give us each a dozen chocolate frogs for her."

"Thinking back, we would have been overcharging him."

"Something about using her in the finale in the hippogriff baiting act..."

"Come to think of it, didn't he try and buy Euri Logan as well?"

"Sure, but Plato said he had plans for his little sister and wouldn't let him have her."

"That's when he doubled the chocolate frog offer, didn't he?"

"We've really been far too good to you, Sal."

A bell rang at the door.

"Carriage is here!" Sally positively flew out of her chair to grab her cloak from the hook in the hall and help her father load up her trunk.

"Come along boys!" Her mother bustled through, clearing plates and actually removing the still egg-laden fork from her son's hand.

"But I haven't finished breakfast yet!"

"You should have been up earlier, you're old enough to know the drill by now, out you go!"

As the boys climbed into the carriage they found Sally already waiting, ankles crossed, neat as you please, with two large bundles on her lap. She passed one very stuffed linen napkin to Rupert, and the other to Despard, who hid them away just as their mother was closing the front door. Despard smelt the sausages, eggs, and toast and gave his sister a smacking kiss on the cheek. He turned to his younger brother.

"I knew we kept her around for a reason."

& &

The scene in the Leaky Cauldron, however, was much less serene. The inn was booked, every single room taken, full of students from the country who had stayed the night before taking the Express to Hogwarts.

Tom Thatcher knew all about Hogwarts students, he had two boys of his own, and like Mrs. Murgatroyd, was sending his youngest off to his first year this morning. It gave Tom a sense of accomplishing something, a sense of peace. That peace was quickly shattered by the chaos and unholy amount of noise made by one family of guests.

They were, in fact, his only family of guests. And there were fifteen of them, all related, all loud, all unaccompanied.

When Caroline Parker had appeared in his fire two months ago to inquire if he would be willing to "look" after her and her sisters' children for one night between their journey from the north and their departure on the Hogwarts Express, he had said "Why certainly." The response had been automatic, he had been distracted, he had been preoccupied, he had been medically incapable of making such a decision, he had simply not realized that this was THE Mrs. Parker, that her sister was Mrs. Clark, and her sister-in-law was Mrs. Logan.

Their collective spawn were more commonly known as the Roman Circus. Six Parkers, five Clarks, four Logans, three owls, two cats, and one miniature carnivorous tree.

Their mothers were no doubt at this very moment dancing naked in the wilds of Scotland out of sheer joy, for this year the last of their children were starting school. The Circus was now complete.

Complete, and squarely in the lap of Tom Thatcher, who had felt things could often get out of control with just two children.

He had resolved this morning not to get involved, to just let the children take care of themselves. He had then immediately started up the stairs in panic, as he realized that if the Romans didn't make the train there was little question as to where they would be spending the night. He found, to his great shock, however, that his presence wasn't needed. Fifteen children between the ages of seventeen and ten was indeed chaos, but the Clarks, the Logans, and the Parkers were used to chaos, and they managed it well.

The children were all awake and over half were dressed by half past nine. Tom poked his head into the first room to find Caesar Parker standing over his youngest brother Marcus, checking a list item by item before closing the trunk, and eating a bowl of porridge at the same time.

Tom didn't recall the children ordering breakfast brought up, and as he went to check on this found himself easily sidestepped on the stairs by a cheerful and heavily laden Cassandra Clark, who was carrying four more bowls of porridge and a jug of pumpkin juice, with what Tom assumed to be glasses clinking in the deep pockets of her dress.

He stood, transfixed by the balancing act as she entered the third room, shouting "If she's not up by now 'Genie just empty the wash basin on her!" Moments later a shrill shout was heard, to be followed by the emergence of the sodden figure of Calisto Clark, her nightgown covered in a large purple dressing gown, clutching the empty wash basin in one hand as she stalked away from him toward the bathroom.

She was met in the hall by a curious and more than slightly amused eleven year old boy, who had emerged from the fourth room and looked as if he was about to say something.

"One word Cassius, I swear just one word and this time the color change will be permanent."

Cassius dropped his smile and averted his gaze until his sister passed him by. For a moment Tom thought he might lose control and begin to laugh, but he was saved by the voice of one of the Clark girls.

"Cassius! Get in here and eat your breakfast NOW!"

A taller boy darted out of the fourth bedroom, struggling with his tie and ruffling Cassius' hair as he passed. "Come on old man, before it gets cold." That boy stepped into the third bedroom, from which there came a booming, "Inspection!" followed by the sound of a small stampede.

"Socrates, do you call that a tie?"

"Calisto normally does it, and she slept in! Don't look at me like that Ari, you don't have to tie it every day if you take it off real careful, you know."

"You can't call yourself a man and have your cousin tie your school ties. Watch Plato again, and when I come back I want to see it done properly."

"You know, this whole authority thing has gone straight to your head."

"If it weren't for me you would have left your wand in the carriage. Start taking care of yourself and we'll stop treating you like a baby."

"Speaking of babies, Ari, where's Euri?"

"She's not here?"

"She's...ugh, who invented these things anyway...she went with Electra...does this look right?"

"Went with Electra? Where did they go?"

"Something about last minute errands, the twins took them into the ally early this morning."

"What! Caesar! Cassandra!"

Tom flattened against the wall as the two called came at a run. When Aristotle Logan used that tone, something was seriously wrong."

"What is it? Everyone's up, everyone's packed." Caesar looked around.

"And fed," Cassandra added, taking a sip of pumpkin juice.

"And accounted for?"

"Um," Tom could almost hear the other two reckoning in their heads, it didn't take long.

"Damn it all, Julius! Augustus!"

"Electra!"

"According to Socrates they all went into Diagon Ally early this morning, and they took Euripides with them."

"What?"

"Impossible, I charmed that door myself."

"Oh the twins worked out how to beat that years ago."

By this time the Clark girls (minus Electra), Cassius, and Marcus Parker had gathered in the doorway.

"Do we owl mother?"

"Cassius, the first thing you need to learn about going away to school is that you NEVER, EVER owl mother."

"Besides, she and Aunt Caroline and Aunt Isobel are probably out dancing in the fields by now."

"What time is it?"

"Quarter till ten."

"Damn it all, we need to leave in fifteen minutes!"

"Calm down, it never takes that long to get to the station, they've got to be back soon."

Ten minutes later the remaining eleven children were assembled in the main dining room, their trunks stacked near the door, Caesar staring impatiently at the door to the ally while Aristotle waited for the carriages from the street and Cassandra checked upstairs to make sure nothing was left behind.

At precisely ten o'clock, three things occurred: Cassandra came down the stairs with three pocket handkerchiefs, two sets of gloves, a hairbrush, a comb, and a cat that had been left in the bedrooms; the carriages pulled up and Aristotle began directing the loading of the trunks; and the door to Diagon Ally opened to reveal the twin figures of Julius and Augustus Parker, Electra Clark, and little Euripides Logan, who were all smiling and laughing until they saw the faces of their siblings and cousins.

Julius broke the silence, "I just want to point out that we ARE on time."

& &

"Ugh, mother he's got jam all over my robes, jam!"

"Oh darling, now he's too small to-"

"He is old enough to know the difference between a tea towel and my clothes! Why did he have to come along?"

"Well I couldn't very well leave him at home with Nana, not with her heart condition, and you know Agnes is no longer working in the nursery so until they get us another barrel- don't make that face dear heart, he is your brother."

"He's a monster."

Mrs. Keating thought of how well her oldest child had behaved when SHE was three, but thought the better of it. Handful or not, Veronica had never driven quite so many people to tears as her baby brother.

"Well, you'll be rid of him soon I daresay, mind the drop there darling, press on, the platform is just this way."

Diana Keating was thinking of her first days at school, and hardly noticed the distinguished looking gentleman standing beside the platform until he approached her. Mrs. Keating's trained eye easily recognized the lines of his very expensive robes; a Ministry man, that was obvious.

"Mrs. Keating, I presume? I'm Mr. Forsythe."

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Forsythe, I'll be happy to meet with you in a moment, but if you'll just let me see my daughter onto the train."

"Yes, that's what I am here about, Mrs. Keating."

"I don't understand."

"The Hogwarts Express is a very special, very distinguished, very cherished locomotive, and it is out of concern for it's safety and the ever urgent need for an on time departure that the Ministry has banned your son from the platform."

"Excuse me?"

"Your son is not allowed to pass onto the platform while the Express is in the station."

"This is outrageous!"

"Diana? Diana what's going on?"

"Oh, Clarice, you couldn't imagine what this man is suggesting..."

Veronica, who thought that this was all marvelous, turned around to see the red haired woman, Clarice, just behind them. The conversation was blocking the way onto the platform, and a rather conspicuous line of children and trunks and owls was piling up.

The woman had a blue and silver pin with the initials W.A.S in raised letters, so Veronica assumed she was one of her mother's "society girls." She was trailed by a tall gentleman with a brown mustache, a girl with brown curls, and a small boy that could be no older than three, whose face was positively covered with jam.

She locked eyes with the girl, who took note of Veronica's equally sticky brother; the pang of sympathy and stab of camaraderie was instant. Veronica grinned and walked over.

"Hello there," smiled the gentleman, "You must be Veronica? I'm Mr. Lawrence, this is my daughter Deirdre, she's starting this year as well."

"Unbelievable treatment!" Veronica's mother raised her voice.

Mr. Lawrence sighed and gave the girls a conspiratorial wink. "Let's see if I can smooth this over before lunch, hmmm? Watch your brother Deirdre."

Deirdre groaned, slipped a handkerchief out of her father's passing pocket, and wrapped her hand in it before taking her brother's.

"This is Arthur. He is the messiest creature on the planet."

Veronica shrugged. "They won't even let my brother on the platform."

Deirdre's eyes widened in appreciation. "Wow."

Mr. Lawrence came back over. "All right, they're not letting your brother come through Veronica, and no one is willing to hold him, they refuse to let him run loose, so go say goodbye to your mother, and then I'll get you two settled on the train. Say goodbye to mother as well Deirdre, she and Arthur are going to stay with Mrs. Keating."

Overcome with joy, Veronica ran back to her mother, who was spitting mad and speaking very fast with Mrs. Lawrence, and who merely patted her on the head and gave her a quick kiss and a bit of trite advice about keeping her gloves clean. Veronica dashed back to Mr. Lawrence, who had stacked her trunk easily on top of Deirdre's; in the next instant he had placed herself and Deirdre on top of the trunks and was wheeling them, to Veronica's delight and slight alarm, straight towards the wall.

"All right girlies, hang on tight and away we go!"

Veronica twisted around to wave back over her shoulder. "Goodbye Typhon!"

A very sticky, very demented face trying to inhale a cookie was the last thing she saw before Mr. Lawrence pushed her through the wall and she disappeared. Had she dashed back out she would have been rewarded with the sight of Typhon swallowing too quickly in his surprise, and nearly choking, necessitating a good solid thwack on the back from his mother, which pitched him over and into Oliver. This started them both crying, resulting in both Mrs. Lawrence and the indignant Mrs. Keating being hustled out of King's Cross by a very haggard looking Ministry official, taking their mewling offspring with them.

&

Abigail Vincent stepped back just in time to avoid being run over by a large trolley containing two trunks and two girls about her own age.

She watched the cart being wheeled toward the train with a stab of envy. Her own father was not there. Mr. Hugo Vincent Sr. was a senior overseer in the Experimental Potions Department, and due to an event which her father would not talk about which had occurred over the summer, he was not allowed to leave his laboratory unsupervised for longer than an hour. This gave him exactly enough time to transport Hugo Jr. and herself to platform 9 ¾, give her a kiss on the cheek, tell Hugo to look after his little sister, and apparate back to work. Abigail's mother was in Bath, celebrating the end of summer holidays with several of her Witches Aid Society friends who had also sent their youngest children off to school at last.

Hugo seemed to consider pointing toward the train and warning "Don't get left behind, Abby" as complete fulfillment of his 'take care of little sister' obligation, and was at the moment running wild with Gordon Hedgpeth and Bartholomew Babcock. Abigail had tried following them for a few minutes, only to understand that that bag in Hugo's pocket was, as she had suspected, NOT chocolate frogs, as he had professed to her father, and that the 4th year Ravenclaws were, in fact, attempting to slip a small incendiary device, unseen, into the second to last compartment. Feeling this could not end well, Abigail had gone back to her trunk.

She was fairly certain her father had meant for Hugo to put it on the train for her, but Abigail thought it rather dangerous to distract him at this point, and decided there was nothing for it but to try and move it herself.

It was rather heavy, she wasn't sure what her mother had packed in it, but the best she could manage was to drag it about a meter at a time towards the train, the whole while cringing at the loud scraping noise of the brand new trunk. Mother wasn't going to like that at all.

She was almost to the baggage compartment when the stampede hit.

It was impossible to understand what was happening in the press of bodies that instantly surrounded her. She was buffeted by trunks being passed up, orders being called out.

"The next one, pass it up Cordelia!"

"Keep your wig on Julius, we're going as fast as we can."

"Where's my trunk?"

"Caesar don't stack it like that they'll fall open!"

"Ow! Plato your tree bit me again!"

'Well YOU shouldn't have made that joke about spider mites."

"Wait! Cassius left the chocolate frogs in his, pull it back out!"

"Does this look infected to you?"

It all took place in less than ten minutes. The swarm of students dissolved into the train, and Abigail was left looking at a completely full baggage compartment.

"Merciful Merlin," she growled, looking up and down the train for the next one, her face dropping as she saw it was several cars away.

"Get caught by the Roman Circus, did you?"

She turned to see a chuckling boy about six feet tall with black hair pushing a trolley and smiling at her.

"You'll have to forgive them, they get so used to it just being themselves all the time, they forget about the rest of us."

Abigail shook her head, "Are they all related?"

"Yes, not immediately, you know, they're all cousins. But you only really ever get them like this at the beginning and end of the year, the Hogwarts hat has sorted them out all over the place, so they're usually much easier to manage."

"Well that is a comfort."

"Indeed. I'm Orion, by the way, Orion Forseti."

"Abigail Vincent, pleasure."

"Vincent...as in Hugo Vincent?"

Abigail nodded. Orion whistled. "Well, you must be stronger than you look. First year, must be if you haven't met a Clark, Logan, or Parker. Here, put that up on the trolley, and we'll find a place for all this further up the train, there's usually heaps of room. Cassie, I'm not moving this by myself, come on!"

At Orion's shout a tall girl with long black hair turned from her conversation with one of the Romans and trotted back.

"Arachne says they passed an empty compartment further up. Hello," she smiled at Abigail.

"Abigail Vincent, my sister Cassiopeia Forseti."

Cassie's eyebrows raised, "Are you related to Hugo Vincent?"

Again, Abigail nodded with trepidation. Cassie giggled, "Oh, don't worry. Hugo is one of my year mates, so I like him just fine. If I weren't in Ravenclaw, however, it might be different. Where is he," she looked around the platform, "Trying to blow up the Slytherins again if his record is worth anything."

Several cars up, sure enough, there was a nearly empty baggage compartment, into which Orion and Cassie loaded the three trunks.

"They'll take care of it for you at Hogwarts, it'll be brought up to your room just as soon as you are sorted."

"Thank you very much."

"Pleasure was all mine, by the way, where did you say your brother was poking about?"

Abigail paused, "End of the train, second car from the end."

"Right," Orion fished in his pockets before pulling out a small, flat, metal object. He blew the lint off of it and fastened it to his shirt. "That means I ought to be in the back half of the train. Prefect, you know, and your brother creates about half of my work. Damn entertaining though, never exactly the same."

A whistle blew, and students on the platform began scattering for the cars.

"Best be getting on then, won't be long now."

Cassie waved and hopped into a compartment a few cars down. Abigail followed Orion into the train, and was immediately confronted by a flushed 17 year old girl with her brown hair pulled back in an elegant twist.

"Hello Belle, have a nice summer? Have you seen Caesar or Declan, we got here a bit late and-"

"Orion, we need to talk to you."

"We-"

"It's rather urgent," Belle smiled nervously at Abigail.

"Right, you'll be fine on your own, won't you Abigail? I seem to have a pressing matter of business to attend to. Nothing to it, of course, you just stay on the train and get off when everyone else does. Excuse me."

Rather confused, Orion followed Belle into the next car, leaving Abigail standing in the corridor. She made her way quickly down the train, taking a seat in an empty compartment in the third to last car, having decided that, if her brother was going to blow up a car full of Slytherins, it just might be a sight worth seeing.


	4. 4: The Slytherins

Chapter Four: The Slytherins  
  
There was plenty of room on the Express that year, and several students other than Abigail Vincent were traveling in their own compartments.  
  
Richard Forsythe was not one of those students. He found himself rather squashed just as the train moved out of the station, sharing a compartment with George Roberts, James Gryffiths, Victoria Darcy, Elizabeth Warren, and Mary Tillinghouse.  
  
They had been called "the Royal Firsties" when they arrived last year, seeing as they all shared the names of various British muggle sovereigns, with the notable exception of Victoria, who considered herself to actually BE royalty in her own right and to the devil with what she had been named.  
  
It had, of course, come with its share of problems. Once their fellow Slytherins had beaten the joke as far as it could go, they had left them be. Their fellow year mates had not been so kind. Slytherins in general were automatically considered arrogant and snobbish, and once the title got out, they had never been rid of it. Gryffindors especially liked to mock bow to "King Richard", just before tripping him in the halls. As a result, the 2nd years had bonded together uncommonly close, for Slytherins were a little less open by nature, but nothing holds a bond together stronger than uncalled for persecution in adolescence.  
  
"Pass the pies, Vic." James was forever hungry.  
  
"We're all out, you will just have to wait until Mary gets back."  
  
"Well she didn't have to go buy any, we're quite well set up with other sweets."  
  
Victoria and Elizabeth rolled their eyes. "She didn't go buy anything, she's stealing some from the Gryffindor compartment."  
  
"Oh, not that I object, but why?"  
  
Vic shrugged, "She did the same last spring, it's pathetically easy, the boys are usually running wild somewhere else anyway. It's harder to steal from the girls, they tend to actually remain in the compartment. Elizabeth bet her three chocolate frogs that she wouldn't be able to steal a pastry from Kathleen Connell."  
  
"You have chocolate frogs there, old girl?"  
  
"Yes I do, and no, you can't have them, there's three left and on the off chance that she IS able to steal food from Kathleen, I'll have to pay up. You are just going to have to wait James."  
  
"I hate waiting."  
  
"Here, have some of this."  
  
"What is it, it isn't snails, is it George?"  
  
George's mother came from Paris, had attended Beauxbatons, and therefore had a very low opinion of English school food. As a result, George was sent off to school with a large supply of what Helene Roberts considered to be "healthy food for a growing boy", which did, from time to time, include snails and suspicious smelling spreads. There was, however, always plenty to go around.  
  
"It's cheese James, perfectly safe."  
  
James devoured the heavily laden cracker with absolutely no respect for the hours the Roberts cook had spent making it.  
  
The conversation turned to Quidditch, as it always did, and little thought was given to pies until the compartment door opened with a slam to reveal a panting 12 year old girl with long curly brown hair that was somewhat disheveled, torn stockings, and no pies in sight.  
  
"I win," Elizabeth chirped cheerfully.  
  
"No, you don't," Mary collapsed into the seat after closing the door.  
  
"What do you mean Mary? And what have you been doing?"  
  
"They came back in unexpectedly, so I hid behind a few boxes on the luggage rack. I thought I was a goner for sure, but I wasn't."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"They weren't staying very long, it seems all the Gryffindors are clustered together up at the front of the train."  
  
Elizabeth looked bemused, "I still don't see how this gets you out of owing me three chocolate frogs."  
  
"I couldn't steal anything from Kathleen Connell."  
  
"And that would be why you owe me three chocolate frogs."  
  
"Listen Elizabeth! I couldn't steal any food from here because SHE'S NOT HERE!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"She's muggle born, and she's from Ireland, and her family went to America over the summer, and they took her with them."  
  
"They just left?"  
  
Mary nodded. "I don't think she's the only one, either. The Gryffindors were all buzzing, I think there's a lot more."  
  
The compartment went silent. Rivalry or no, none of the Slytherins was rejoicing at the idea that spunky Kathleen Connell, who knew more swear words than any other second year, had been shipped across the ocean because there was nothing to eat in Ireland. The Famine had been a strange sort of detached issue for the Slytherins, there had been no muggle born students sorted into the house in centuries, so they all knew their close friends were safe from the dangers of the muggle world. This being their second year at school, it was the first time the little group had been affected by a "famine loss." They weren't sure what to do.  
  
Elizabeth mutely handed her chocolate frogs to James and went back to reading her book.  
  
James looked down at the frogs in his lap. He stared at them all the way to Hogwarts, but he didn't eat them.  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
  
"Has anyone seen Cordelia?"  
  
Priscilla Van Veldhausen stuck her head into a compartment on the last car of the train, which had been the privileged haunt of seventh year Slytherins for generations.  
  
Her friend and year-mate Helena Cadaver was lounging across her seat, devouring a summer's worth of copies of "Equality Now!" a suffragette witch magazine. Mrs. Cadaver was a traditionalist who disputed the necessity of girls learning anything beyond scouring spells and the proper management of house elves, and as such Helena had to have her subscription forwarded to Molly Puffin, a seventh year Hufflepuff she had known since primary, for the entire summer. Mrs. Puffin was one of the first witches to be appointed to the Hogwart's Board of Governors, and therefore heartily approved of her daughter's apparent interest in female liberation. In reality, Molly had never really felt oppressed by "the domineering sex" and she tossed the things in a pile the minute they arrived and didn't think about them until the first of September, when she dropped the lot in the top of her trunk to be passed off to Helena on the train.  
  
"Of course I haven't. It's the first day of school, she probably hasn't had an unsupervised moment with Brian since they came out of the baggage car last June, where do you THINK she is?"  
  
"Helena!" Honestly, women's liberation was all fine and good, but the things that girl suggested...  
  
"Oh Priscilla don't be such a ninny. Merlin knows wherever they are they aren't playing chess. They can't anyway, their pieces get all moony looking at each other and when the time comes for checkmate they'd rather kiss the queen than properly decapitate her, it's disgusting."  
  
Priscilla sighed and dropped into the seat across from Helena. "Well, how do you think poor Ari feels, we've got each other, without Brian he's all by himself." The shortage of seventh year Slytherin males was a predicament that both Mrs. Van Veldhausen and Mrs. Cadaver found appalling. After all, one of the benefits of tolerating seven years of female education was that by the end of it they came out practically engaged! But their daughter's year had only five students, three girls, and two boys, and there was nothing to be done about it.  
  
Helena snorted, "Aristotle Logan, alone? He has eleven cousins in the school, Caesar is his best friend anyway, I don't think he lacks any company."  
  
At that moment a blond haired eleven year old boy stuck his head in the door. Helena quickly pulled a copy of "Housewitch's Digest" over her magazine.  
  
"Helena, can I borrow a few sickles ... for the food trolley?"  
  
"I thought father gave you your allowance before we got on the train?"  
  
"He did."  
  
"You ate it all already?"  
  
"Well... no, not all by myself, I shared."  
  
"Then have your new friends buy you some candy, and you have chocolate on your nose."  
  
Oberon Cadaver rubbed his nose with the back of his sleeve, which only served to smear the chocolate further across his face. He had an earnest expression on his face, too earnest to be for chocolate frogs, Helena noted, her youngest brother had never been keen on sweets, strangely enough.  
  
"Please Helena!"  
  
"No."  
  
"But-"  
  
"God's teeth Oberon, go bother your brother, or go play somewhere interesting, like under the train."  
  
Oberon frowned and turned to leave, coming face to face with the towering figure of Aristotle Logan.  
  
"Oh hello? You must be Helena's."  
  
"I claim no responsibility whatsoever for that, and before he asks, you are not to give him any money, Aristotle."  
  
Oberon, having lost his chance, headed up the train, closing the compartment as Aristotle took a seat.  
  
"You won't believe what I just heard about Bartley Murphy and Declan Quinn...."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&  
  
"Do you have any more pies Rupert?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Any juice?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Any chocolate frogs?"  
  
"Sal, you know how many more chocolate frogs I would have if I'd just ignored Despard and sold you eight years ago?"  
  
Dylan O'Fallon chuckled and tossed Sally a piece of rock candy from his pile of sweets. "Here you go Sal."  
  
Sally grinned, popped the candy into her mouth, and went back to staring out the window in rapt fascination. Rupert could scowl over his chessboard all he liked, but she really had been practically invisible the whole trip. The Murgatroyds were not what you would call a widely traveled family, not by wizarding standards, and Sally had never seen so much of England at once.  
  
Of course, one could stare at the scenery or Rupert's never ending game of chess with Dylan for only so long, and every so often Sally would try to engage the boys in conversation.  
  
That had never gone particularly well, as Rupert and Dylan were very serious about chess, and it usually ended in allusions to Sally's near-sale to circus folk or a suggestion that she go play in some perilous part of the train.  
  
She probably ought to have just found a compartment on her own, but Sally was eager to learn all about Hogwarts, having suspected that her brothers had fed her slightly altered versions of the truth her entire life, including this morning when they were discussing the pool in the Slytherin dormitories. So she had followed her brother back to a compartment in the third car from the end of the train, near the other Slytherins. However, once the chess had started, all communication that wasn't in the forms of grunts or curses seemed to have ceased.  
  
"Knock, knock," a smiling red headed girl opened the door, "Has anyone seen Nicodemus? He's wandered off."  
  
"Is his a third year too?" Sally pounced, eager for someone to talk to.  
  
The girl laughed and shook her head, "No, he's a cat. And who are you?"  
  
Sally stood up, "I'm Sally, Sally Murgatroyd."  
  
"Oh, you're Rupert's little sister! Oh he's told us all about you! I was wondering when you'd turn up." She turned on Rupert, who had barely looked up from his game, "You beast, I bet she's spent the whole trip staring out the window, poor thing! Did they even feed you? I bet not. You could set off a dozen dung bombs around them when they're in the middle of a game and they'd hardly know it. I'm Tess, by the way, Tess Windlass. Come on, you better come sit with the girls, these games can get violent towards the end."  
  
Before Sally was even aware of it she was pulled out of the compartment and into the next. This one was already occupied by two girls, a tall brunette and smaller girl with glasses and black curly hair.  
  
"Now the one on the left is Beverly Chase, and the one on the right with the glasses is Claudia Vernberg. This is Sally, she's Rupert's little sister. I rescued her from a game of Murgatroyed-O'Fallon chess."  
  
Tess dropped down on the empty bench across from Claudia, Sally sat beside her, near the window.  
  
"Pass the pies, Bev, I'm famished. I bet you are too, aren't you Sally?"  
  
Sally didn't really have a choice as a pie was thrust into her hands.  
  
Claudia looked up from her book, "Did you find Nicodemus?"  
  
Tess frowned, "No, I didn't really get very far. He's probably wandered up the train towards the food closet. He'll be back in a hurry if they catch him in there."  
  
Beverly smiled at Sally, "So Sally, are you excited about Hogwarts?"  
  
Sally nodded, "I'm afraid that what I've been told about it is mostly lies, however."  
  
Claudia grinned, "With Rupert and Despard for brothers that's no small wonder. What do you want to know?"  
  
"Everything, but, does Slytherin really have a swimming pool in the dormitories?"  
  
Tess smiled enigmatically. "We can only tell you the truth behind THAT if you're sorted into Slytherin."  
  
Sally's face fell a bit.  
  
"Don't worry, with both your brothers in, it's more than likely you will be too. And there's plenty we can tell you without violating house privileges."  
  
They then proceeded to give Sally a crash session in Hogwarts history, traditions, the rules, ways to break them without being caught, and all the generally known secrets of the castle that weren't particular to Slytherin House.  
  
They were halfway through a description of Hogsmeade and the wonders therein when the door opened to reveal a tall boy with a disheveled tie carrying a cat.  
  
"Nicodemus!" Tess squealed, scooping a grey cat with white feet and a white chin and neck into her arms.  
  
"Found him on my way back down the train, he was snooping around the food closet."  
  
"Told you," Tess sat down, sliding over so the boy could sit next to her. "Sally, this is Socrates Logan, Socrates, this is Sally Murgatroyd-"  
  
"Rupert's little sister, he told me you were in here. Said you were eager to start school."  
  
Sally nodded.  
  
"Yeah, well, wait until you blow something off in potions class."  
  
Beverly passed Socrates a pie. "What were you doing up at that end of the train? Chasing the food trolley?"  
  
Socrates shook his head, "I was up talking to my cousin."  
  
Claudia rolled her eyes, "Oh, that's helpful." She turned to Sally, "He HAS eleven on the train."  
  
Socrates grinned, "Actually, this year it's more like fourteen."  
  
"You're kidding."  
  
"Nope, there's a Logan, a Parker, AND a Clark starting this year. You're going to get to know my relatives pretty well Sally."  
  
"I DEMAND A REMATCH!"  
  
There was the sound of banging and shouting, and suddenly a disheveled Rupert appeared in door to the third year girls' compartment.  
  
"Hey Sal, be a sport, go run and get Despard to let me borrow his chess set, will you?"  
  
Tess groaned, "I told you they got violent."  
  
Rupert rolled his eyes, "He's claiming I did something to the chess pieces. I'll give you your worth in chocolate frogs if you can get it to me in ten minutes."  
  
Sally shrugged and slipped out and toward the back of the train.  
  
"What do you mean her worth in chocolate frogs Rupert?"  
  
"Long story, hey, where have YOU been?"  
  
"Up front talking to the family. Go get Dylan, you will never believe what I heard about Sheila Murphy and Tommy Concannon."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
  
"And you're certain it was the Budapest Beater's Bludgering Bible?"  
  
"I told you, I saw them buying it this morning, they must have been up at dawn, they got the last copy."  
  
"Are they going to reprint it?"  
  
"It's your move, Edgar."  
  
"I don't know, but it's printed in Hungary, and with this whole scuffle about the import tax it may take months to get another shipment."  
  
"Well how did the first one get here?"  
  
"It came through France, I think. In any case, there's no way we'll get a copy before the first match of the year."  
  
"It's your move Edgar."  
  
"There's not any way we could get a copy by, alternative means?"  
  
"Not bloody likely, we're going to have to start 'paying closer attention' to their practices."  
  
"They never try out the good stuff in practice, they always wait till the game."  
  
"It's your move Edgar."  
  
"They're going to HAVE to practice this stuff."  
  
"They're Ravenclaws, Alfred, they can do anything if there's a book on it."  
  
"But this is Quidditch! You don't learn Quidditch from books!"  
  
"You can tell that to the Hufflepuffs when you explain to them why they didn't win the Quidditch Cup last year."  
  
"IF YOU DON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT QUIDDITCH I AM GOING TO TRANSFIGURE YOU ALL INTO BUNNIES!"  
  
Alfred Hogarth, Edgar Fortinbrass, and Rueben Foster stared in astonishment at the very frustrated form of Mildred Hesperus, who, true to her word, had her wand out and a look in her eye that in no way suggested she was bluffing. Transfiguration was Mildred's second best subject after Defense Against the Dark Arts.  
  
"Sorry Mildred," Edgar moved his pawn, only to have it viciously torn limb from limb by Mildred's knight, who had been waiting to do so for quite some time.  
  
Mildred liked the boys in her year, she really did. But when the sixth year Slytherin males got going about Quidditch, sometimes the threat of being irreversibly transformed into something cute and fluffy was the only way to get through to them. They had been debating over the repercussions of Julius and Augustus Parker's purchase this morning in Diagon Ally of the latest in professional international Quidditch playbooks for over an hour, and frankly, she could take no more.  
  
She would normally have been traveling with her female year-mates, however, Siobhan Bronwen was off in the Hufflepuff car having tea with Gwdion Goodfellow, and Eva Atwater was doing Something with Ravenclaw Archibald Tumnus. At their suggestion that she go with Siobhan and make conversation with Algernon Northumberland Mildred had stammered an excuse and retreated to a game of chess with Edgar. She and Algie were just friends, that was all.  
  
Siobhan returned just after Edgar had been thoroughly trounced and Mildred's pieces had danced a hornpipe across the board in celebration.  
  
"What, over so soon?" Mildred teased as a disgruntled Siobhan settled next to her.  
  
"Yes, sadly, we were, interrupted, and then decided that it wouldn't set a good example for two prefects to be caught, er...."  
  
"Using the baggage car?" Reuben smiled.  
  
"Neglecting their duties," Siobhan finished, but she blushed anyway.  
  
"Besides," she added in a quiet undertone to Mildred, "the baggage car was already in use. I swear, that is NO way for the Head Girl to be behaving."  
  
"Well, she probably hasn't had a moment alone with Brian all summer."  
  
"True. So, Algernon asked after you, by the way."  
  
Mildred blushed to the roots of her light brown hair. "Oh?"  
  
Siobhan chuckled, and was about to go into a detailed description of the conversation when Eva Atwater slipped in, shutting the door behind her and leaning back against it.  
  
"How was Archie?" Mildred asked sweetly.  
  
"Oh, we didn't get to have a very long conversation, Augustus Parker had some book he needed to show him, and I could tell he really wanted to go, so I told him I'd just have a chat with the girls."  
  
Siobhan and Mildred nodded. "The girls" referred to the two female Ravenclaw sixth years, Rosella Zobell and Charlotte Mortimer. They were uncommonly talkative and reasonable, for Ravenclaws, unlike the girls in Gryffindor, who ran positively wild sometimes and had to be treated rather delicately, or they were prone to snap.  
  
"You didn't get a look at the book, did you?" Edgar, it appeared, had been paying attention to the conversation.  
  
"No, not at all."  
  
"Oh," no longer interested, he turned back to the game of Exploding Cribbage he was playing with Reuben and Alfred, all squashed together on the seat.  
  
"Anyways, Julius calls in about halfway through, and as a courtesy to Rosella really we invite him to sit, they really are terribly shy about it- "  
  
"I can't imagine Julius Parker being shy about anything," Siobhan added dryly.  
  
"Well, in any case, he'd just been up front talking to his cousin-"  
  
"Which one?"  
  
"Oh Merlin only knows, and anyway, you won't believe what I just heard about Eamon Murphy, Michael Delving, and Seamus O'Connor."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
  
"Despard?"  
  
Sally flung her head into a compartment containing three fifteen year old girls.  
  
"Oops, sorry, I get turned around on this train. I was looking for my brother."  
  
"You're Despard's little sister! Oh he's told us all about you! We were wondering when you'd turn up. And they have you running errands for them? Horrid boys, have they fed you? Come sit down."  
  
As a pretty blond girl pulled her down onto a seat, Sally wondered what it was that made her so popular with the girls in her brother's years.  
  
"Actually, I really do need to find Despard-"  
  
"Oh, we'll get him for you. Geri, be a lamb and go snag Desi will you?"  
  
"Desi?" Sally nearly choked. Despite the fact that they called her Sal, she had NEVER, EVER been allowed to bestow upon her siblings any sort of affectionate nickname. Especially not one as bad as 'Desi'.  
  
The blond girl smiled, "We don't call him that to his face, naturally. I'm Georgiana Vernberg, by the way, and that girl who just trotted off was Geraldine Idyll, but you can't possibly call anyone that sweet Geraldine. And the girl with her nose stuck in the book is Winifred Dayton."  
  
Winifred pulled her head out of the book to stick out her tongue.  
  
"You see, she's quite awful enough to actually be called Winifred, aren't you Winnie?"  
  
Winifred nodded, "I'm afraid I am. Fear me child, fear me."  
  
The effect of the words was somewhat ruined by the fact that she was crossing her eyes and wiggling her ears as she said it.  
  
"That's an attractive look for you Freddie," Despard commented smoothly as he leaned against the doorjamb.  
  
"My mission in life."  
  
"What's the matter Sal? Did Rupert go tell you to play under the train? Because I can tell you where it is but I'm not coming with you."  
  
"Despard!" Georgiana frowned.  
  
"Ah, he's just teasing her. Sally likes it, don't you Sal?"  
  
This came from a messy haired well built boy with shoulders a little too broad for the door. He slipped awkwardly past Despard and sat down next to Winifred.  
  
"I'm used to it, how are you Benedict?"  
  
Benedict Poe was one of Despard's closest friends, both in the emotional- bonding sense and the physical one, their other male year-mate lived in Scotland, and Sally had seen Benedict frequently over the summer.  
  
"Fine, can't complain, you still eager for Hogwarts?"  
  
Sally nodded and grinned.  
  
"Well, it'll pass. Wait until you blow something off in potions class."  
  
Sally rolled her eyes and turned back to her big brother.  
  
"Rupert wants to borrow your chess set, and I get my worth in chocolate frogs if I get it to him in the next four minutes."  
  
"Did you check that he actually had that many before you came rushing over?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"That's my girl."  
  
"What does she mean, her worth in chocolate frogs?"  
  
"Long story, come on, it's in the other compartment."  
  
Sally was waiting in the aisle while her brother rummaged in his satchel for the chess set. She was facing the back of the train, and not really paying attention. As a result, she jumped a mile when a polite cough came from behind her. She spun around to see a tall, dark haired boy that reminded her strikingly of someone she had just met. However, she had met quite a few people today.  
  
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you, I just need to duck in here."  
  
Sally stepped back as the boy entered her brother's compartment.  
  
"Where have YOU been? Sally, here's the chess set, tell Rupert not to get the pieces all riled up, some of us like a more civilized game."  
  
"Oh, is this one yours?" The boy asked.  
  
"This is my little sister Sally. Sally, this is Plato Logan, he has a few cousins starting this year as well."  
  
"So I've heard."  
  
"Pleasure to meet you Sally. Did I hear you're going back to Rupert? Can you do me a favor and remind Socrates to fix his tie? It's always crooked."  
  
That's who the boy reminded her of. "Of course."  
  
"Thank you so much. So, where's Benedict?"  
  
"In with the girls, you're going to be late Sal."  
  
As Sally trotted towards her forty-eight chocolate frogs she heard the conversation float away.  
  
"Well you better go get him, I just came from Cassandra, and you will not believe what I heard about Patrick Murphy and Sean McAllister."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&  
  
"Someone's coming."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Don't know, never seen him before, he's probably harmless."  
  
"Constant vigilance, Gloria."  
  
"He looks pretty small."  
  
"Let me see...oh, he's all right, he can come in."  
  
The fourth year Slytherins occupied the front most compartments in the second car from the end of the Express. As a guard against a repeat of last spring's dungbombing by the Unholy Trinity of Hedgpeth, Vincent, and Babcock, they were monitoring the doors to the car, and had been for the entire ride. The inter-house warfare between the fourth year Slytherins and Ravenclaws was rather more aggressive than other rivalries, and every year they sought to top the deeds of the last.  
  
Moments later, Gloria Levinton opened the door for a small blond boy with chocolate smeared across his face, who trotted past and pulled open the door to the second compartment.  
  
"Hey Puck, can I borrow a few sickles for the food trolley?"  
  
"You already asked Helena and she already said no, is that it?"  
  
Oberon paused a minute, before deciding on the truth. "Yes."  
  
"If you're hungry you can have my last pie."  
  
"Oh, no, I'll just buy my own."  
  
"I really don't want it Oberon."  
  
"Well, I-"  
  
"You don't want the money for the food trolley Oberon, you want it so you can stay in the poker game that...let's see, Cassius Clark, has to be, is running right now along with his cousins."  
  
Oberon stared at Puck. "How did you know?"  
  
"Because it is a time honored Clark tradition to swindle as much money as you can out of your classmates on your first train ride to school. You haven't been sorted yet, so everyone's friendly, and you get more people to play. They make it sound like it is all nice and get-to-know-your-fellow- wizard-like, and they end up with all your money. It's a hustle. Calisto ran it my first year, Cassandra ran it the year before that, Iphigenia ran it during my second year, and Electra ran one last year. They are a dynasty of card sharks, there's nothing else to do in Scotland in the winter."  
  
An olive skinned boy with glasses dropped onto the seat across from Puck.  
  
"We checked the floorboards again, and all the storage racks, we even made people get up so we could check for hollowed out seat boxes."  
  
"Nothing?"  
  
"That we can see, but they have been WAY too quiet for there not to be something in place. Besides, by now they must have discovered the remarkably strong glue that Jasper and Vanessa injected into their lemon cremes."  
  
Puck whistled, "Where did she get that stuff?"  
  
The boy shrugged, "Her big brother works in the Experimental Potions Department at the Ministry. She always has the latest stuff. By the way, is this one yours?"  
  
Puck lazily waved his hand from Oberon to the new boy. "Nate, this is my little brother Oberon, Oberon, this is Nathaniel Dicken. Nathaniel, under no circumstance are you to loan Oberon here money. Ever."  
  
"Sorry old man, I have to live with him."  
  
"And don't let me catch you bothering the girls about it either, it is ungentlemanly to ask ladies for money."  
  
"But it's all fine and dandy to go ask them to dangle under the train?" In the door stomped a small girl with plaited brown hair, with a greasy black substance on her arms and forehead.  
  
"Did you see anything?"  
  
"I am afraid so. It's entirely too clean in some places, someone's been mucking about. I think they broke into a vent while the train was in the station."  
  
"It could be anywhere."  
  
"It could be everywhere, in this car at least. Oh, hello?"  
  
"Vanessa, my little brother Oberon, Oberon, Vanessa Harrington, of the glue fame. Where's Jasper?"  
  
"Watching the other door. What glue fame?"  
  
"Never mind. Listen, if it's already here, we don't need to bother anymore, call them back in."  
  
A few minutes later two more people crowded into the compartment, one was the girl Oberon had seen when he came through; the other he assumed was Jasper.  
  
"Oh, everyone, this is my little brother Oberon. You are never to loan him money. Now, Gloria, if there is something in the vent, is there anyway to 'accio' it out?"  
  
Gloria Levinton, a girl of medium height and superb intelligence, was the smartest of their number. She shook her head. "Not if we don't know what it is."  
  
"Well, it can't be a dungbomb, right? You have to light that." Jasper Hogarth was something of an expert at dungbombs.  
  
"Not if they figured out how to detonate it remotely."  
  
"Why the vent?"  
  
"Because we can't get to it and they knew we'd be looking?"  
  
"Because it would get the whole car?"  
  
"There's a thought."  
  
"So we just leave, easy enough."  
  
Puck shook his head, "Not good enough. Now, they are going to want to do this when it would cause maximum chaos, when everyone was back in their seats."  
  
"Right before we get into the station?"  
  
"Exactly. That gives us at least an hour."  
  
"For what?"  
  
Puck grinned, "A counter attack. Now, Nate, you still know how to break into the baggage compartments while the train is moving, right?"  
  
Nate nodded, "Of course."  
  
"All right, Gloria, Vanessa, you work on clearing this car, tell everyone to go either to the back car or the third car from the end, but not beyond, we want to keep the knowledge of this in house. Oberon, go back to Priscilla's car, find Aristotle Logan, we need some information."  
  
As the fourth year Slytherin's set about combating Hugo Vincent and Co,'s mysterious devilish deed, they ran into the frowning figure of Calisto Clark.  
  
"Where have YOU been?"  
  
"Up front with my cousin."  
  
"Oh, that narrows it down."  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"We're beating the Ravenclaws at their own game."  
  
"Really? Splendid. I knew Arachne was being far too nice to me this morning."  
  
"Good then you can show us the way, Oberon, cancel that order, come with me and lend a hand."  
  
"Oh, but first, you will never guess what I just heard about Sean Murphy and Daniel Kelly."  
  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&


	5. 5: Sorting It Out

In A Century

_Chapter Five: Sorting It Out_

"Daphne, you ought to change into your robes, we'll be arriving soon. And you might want to put some water on your face, dear."

Cecily Craven had tried to be as gentle as possible with her roommate, who had been crying even since she heard that their yearmate and fellow Ravenclaw, Tommy Concannon, had moved to America with his family over the summer. Daphne Mimir had been terribly sweet on Tommy, but had never gotten around to telling him so.

Cecily felt a bit guilty about the whole thing. She had been so anxious about her best friend, Bridget O'Toole, that she hadn't even thought about the fact that Tommy's family may have been forced to move away.

Bridget was the only one who hadn't reacted to the news about the 12 Hogwarts students that had dropped out with shock or tears.

"It's the best ting for their families, really," she had shrugged. "They stand a lot better chance of all gettin' through it over der than over here." Bridget always spoke with a light Irish brogue, but it was always heaviest just after the summer holidays.

The only other Ravenclaw group to be directly affected were the seventh years, who were missing Declan Quinn. That being the case, the seventh year girls, Belle Seacrest, Martha Chapman, and Alexandra Odum, had been in and out of the compartment the whole ride, consoling with Daphne. Cecily wasn't sure what the boys were up to, most likely discussing Quidditch, because in her experience, that was what boys did. And she had had plenty of experience with them; her home had been invaded by no less than four boys over the summer. Mother's oriental carpet had still not quite recovered, no matter how hard she, Cecily, and the house elf tried.

Bridget stuck her head in the compartment. "Daphne, stop crying, 'tis not a funeral. And put your robes on, we're going to be there any second."

Bridget had not, obviously, felt the need to coddle Daphne, Bridget was not the coddling type. If something was being difficult and not behaving, as it ought, Bridget hit it, hard, and repeatedly.

Daphne sniffed, Bridget tossed a wet rag at her head. "Wipe yer face, ye look terrible."

Bridget then spun around and walked across to the next compartment, dropping back down next to Luke Redding and across from Nicholas Pinterschloss.

"Is Daphne still crying?"

"She's slowing down."

"Good," Luke was fiddling with his tie while trying to read from his Ancient Runes textbook at the same time. Luke was sad about Tommy, naturally, Tommy was a fine mate. But he had had a little forewarning, Tom had written over the summer to both him and Nicholas to explain the situation, how he didn't feel right staying when his family was leaving, and how he hoped to come back in a few years, when things got better. He and Nick had both been down for the entire month of July, but at the age of 13 there was only so much time a boy could spend in deepest depression, and they had managed to come to an understanding that Tommy would think them rather great luggards if they continued the melancholy much longer.

"You don't think telling her that Tommy secretly fancied Tess Windlass would help snap her out of it, do you?"

"No Nicholas, I don't think that would be a good idea. Is it true?"

"Oh sure, he nearly got bit while pruning his Venomous Tentacula last year because Tess stood across from him in Herbology."

"Really, I never noticed."

"Herbology was Tommy's worst subject last year, I rather think it was all on account of Tess Windlass."

"Didn't she try and Transfigure him into a goose First year?"

"He had an odd habit of honking when extremely excited for weeks afterwards."

"And he still fancied her?"

"Apparently she made quite an impression."

Boys, honestly.

Cecily popped her head in. "The deluge has passed."

"Thank the Lord."

"Bridget-"

"Cecily, Daphne has been sweet on half the boys in our year, present company excluded, this was not love everlasting we are talking about."

"Why present company excluded?"

"Perhaps it has something to do with the way you both eat breakfast, don't ask me, I don't try to understand Daphne."

The boys looked at each other and shrugged, Bridget stood up, "You ought to get into your robes, we're going to be there any second."

She had been saying that for half an hour. Bridget wasn't particularly fond of train travel, she lived for the moment she could apparate and spare herself this whole trying business. With the aura of a Roman general going into battle she strode across the hall to make sure Daphne had finished with all this nonsense.

She never made it, however, because at that moment a very large, and very loud explosion came from the back of the train and Bridget was nearly trampled by the eager feet of Hugo Vincent and his partners in crime Gordon Hedgepeth and Bartholomew Babcock. They were followed in a more orderly fashion by an equally excited Arachne Parker, Bethany Belsch, and Cassiopea Forseti.

Bridget stuck her head in the girls compartment. "Come quick, I think the fourth years just blew up the Slytherins... again."

* * *

For the head boy, the head girl, and the prefects of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the time after the Express left one station and before it arrived in the next were often the most difficult of the year. It was a time when classes had either just ended or not yet begun, which meant no work, no assignments, lots of free time, and, since instructors had demanded a reprieve from train chaperone duties as a part of the staff strike of 1803, absolutely NO adults.

That was a recipe for disaster if ever Gilbert Pendragon had heard of one.

He thought, foolishly enough, that he had it under control this year.

He had Caesar Parker's absolute assurance that his twin brothers Julius and Augustus were closeted away with a new Quidditch book and had no grand schemes for the ride.

He had Orion Foresti keeping a constant eye on the car that held Hugo Vincent and his minions, and Orion had reported not half an hour ago that they had not left the car since the train pulled out of King's Cross.

He also had Hufflepuff prefect Ivy Babcock's assurance that her siblings Holly and Bartholomew had kept to their own cars for the duration of the ride.

The Murphy clan, his fellow Gryffindors all of them, sadly enough, were not on the train this year, which meant he didn't have to look out for Eamon, Patrick, and Sean's perverse delight in blowing up the Slytherin toilets. He was going to miss that, but he wasn't going to miss cleaning it up.

Gwydion Goodfellow had been "having tea" with Siobhan Bronwen for a good portion of the ride, and Gil knew that without him around Algernon Northumberland and Elliot Southington wouldn't be a problem. They were the "how to" men, but the ideas were usually all Gwydion's.

The newest menace, also from his house, to add further trouble, of the Famed Three, the second years known to all as Finn, The Bruce, and Eric the Red, had been somewhat subdued after discovering the absence of their yearmate Kathleen Connell, and he had personally seen that they did nothing but play Exploding Cribbage for the past five hours.

The Murgatroyd brothers had their little sister constantly poking about, and were therefore not free to do anything too elaborate.

And the Clark girls and the Parker sisters were normally quite manageable coming off the truce of the summer holidays. It was mid-term when those rivalries would flare up, especially between Ariadne and Cassandra, and Arachne and Calisto. Gilbert shuddered, the things those girls could come up with....

Speaking of girls, some help from the Head Girl would have been nice in monitoring this traveling circus of about 150. However, as his roommate Wendy had reminded him this morning, Cordelia Morrigan had probably not had an unsupervised moment with Brian Connelly since the two emerged from the last baggage car in June, and did he really want to interrupt?

That had caused Gilbert to blush to the roots of his black, just cut for school, hair. Honesty, grandson of the Minister if Magic or not, the things that boy said sometimes....

He had often wondered over the summer if Wendy had felt upset about not being chosen Head Boy, with the family legacy it seemed he had a lot to live up to. He had finally asked him over lunch, Wendy had nearly choked laughing.

"You know, I spent all of the end of last year dreading I'd GET it! I even considered leaving spaces blank in my finals just to be sure I wasn't eligible."

"You didn't!"

"Of course I didn't, it isn't in the Westing character to be that cowardly. But you know, honestly old man, I didn't want it. I mean, running herd on some of the characters we have in this school? Not my idea of a good time, thanks muchly. Anyway, if I HAD gotten it, everyone would have assumed it was because of Pops."

No matter how many times he heard him say it, Gil never quite got used to how Wendy referred to his grandfather, Minister of Magic Wendall Westing, as "Pops."

"What did he say when he found out?"

Wendy shrugged, "He patted me on the shoulder, told me to congratulate you, and that, personally, he was very proud of me as a grandson but didn't trust me to set the behavioral standard for a pack of flobberworms, let alone a school. He didn't make Heady Boy either, said it made him feel free to be rebellious and rash during his seventh year. That, of course, led to that regrettable incident with the staff toilets that STILL gets mentioned SOMEWHERE whenever the Daily Prophet does a piece on him. Pops thinks it is a reason why he's so popular with the younger set."

Gilbert, who had never done anything rebellious or rash that hadn't been at Wendy's urging, wondered if his best friend realized how like his grandfather he really was.

Gil checked his pocket watch one last time. They should be in the station in fifteen minutes, the students had all returned to their seats to pack up, some to change into their robes at the last minute. He breathed a sigh of relief; the worst was almost over.

It was as he was tucking his watch away that he heard the BOOM.

Damn it all to hell.

* * *

There was simply no room to move on the Hogwarts Express. They were still fifteen minutes out from Hogsmeade Station, and the conductor, no fool he, had locked his door the minute he heard the explosion and poured on more fuel, absolutely refusing to stop. Just as one did not walk alone and unarmed into the nest of a Norwegian Ridgeback, one did not stop in the wilderness after a mysterious explosion with a train full of Hogwarts students, fresh off the summer holidays with their pockets full of Merlin knows what.

The explosion had come from the second car to the end. The final car was in state of calm, being full of Slytherins who had been waiting for the explosion for nearly an hour. The third car had likewise been prepared, but it was met with an influx of students from further up the train who wanted to know what was going on.

As far as he could tell, from his vantage point with his nose pressed against the glass of the backdoor of the fourth car from the end, which was as near as he could get, Hugo's plan seemed to have worked perfectly. The Slytherins in the third car seemed fully agitated, and if the locking mechanism had worked as it should, the students in the second car from the end wouldn't be able to get out until the train stopped and Hugo released the charm.

"Looks perfect," he chuckled over his shoulder to Gordon, who relayed the message to Bartholomew, who told the girls.

"Back to your seats, to your seats at ONCE!"

Agnes Donnelly, the sixth year Gryffindor prefect, had a commanding presence on her own. But seeing as she was now flanked by her honor guard of Kieran Riley and Douglas Douglas, she looked positively imperial. When she told you to get back to your seat, you got back to your seat. It had taken her less than two minutes to clear the aisles of four cars.

"Vincent," she raised an eyebrow at the fourth years with their noses pressed to the glass, "You're looking rather delighted with yourself. You wouldn't know what it is I'm going to find back there, would you?"

"No, not at all." Vincent clasped his hands behind his back and feigned innocence.

"Then GET BACK IN YOUR SEAT!"

The fourth years scattered, and Agnes swept into the third car from the end, only to be met by Gilbert, Orion, Ivy, and Archibald, who had all not been up front, and had beaten her to the scene. They were all looking remarkably calm.

"Well, what is it?"

"What do you think?" Archie was leaning against a doorframe at the back of the car. "Hugo Vincent and Co. tried to detonate a device in the ventilation system to take out that entire car," he gestured back to the second car from the end.

"What?"

"Don't worry," Orion offered her a licorice wand, "The car had been emptied. Puck and his crew are ever vigilant about these tings, and they got everyone out before it happened."

"Oh, all right then, why is everyone still here?"

Gil grinned, "To see what's in the car. After the explosion, the doors locked, so part of the trick was to trap everyone in there. We won't find out till the train stops, I assume, we've tried all the traditional and non-traditional ways, but this is Hugo's group."

"And Cassie is pretty clever with locking charms," Orion added, a little bit proud. Normally the fact that his sister was occasionally party to Hugo's schemes gave him nothing but headaches.

After what seemed like the longest ten minutes of their lives, Hogsmeade appeared in the window, and the train ground to a halt. The younger prefects had been delegated to get students off the train and see to the herding of the first years toward the lake. The older prefects remained gathered just outside the now empty penultimate car. They were joined by a rather flustered Cordelia Morrigan, who leapt from the final car and trotted over to join them, with a very satisfied Brian Connelly following more serenely in her wake.

"I couldn't get into the car, what happened?"

"Don't worry Cordy, disaster has been averted. All will be revealed soon."

Cordelia fixed Archie with a gimlet stare, "Archibald Tumnus, have you been drinking?"

Archie laughed, "Of course not, but, seeing as your hair is normally impeccable, may I ask you where YOU have been all this time?"

Cordelia scowled, pointed her wand at her head, muttered something in French, and her golden tresses arranged themselves in a smooth twist.

In the next moment a loud popping sound could be heard, and the doors to the mysterious car swung open, as did the windows. A greenish sort of smoke came billowing out.

Gilbert noticed Hugo, Gordon, Batholomew, Arachne, Bethany, and Cassie all standing rather too casually to one side, trying too hard NOT to look interested. When no one came spewing out of the cars, screaming, gagging, and entirely green, their grins began to fade. When they noticed Puck, Nathaniel, Jasper, Calisto, Vanessa and Gloria all gathering their trunks to put into the carriages, all remarkably clean, all showing no trace of odor, they began to frown.

When they saw that the same group was watching THEM and wearing the intent, not-trying-to-look-too-eager expressions that they had been wearing themselves not so long ago, they became alarmed.

Finally, Arachne couldn't take it any longer, and, followed closely by Hugo, she stormed into the car.

All the people outside could hear was a high scream and a low pitched string of curses.

"What is it? What's in there?" Cassie called from outside the train.

Arachne appeared at the window, holding what appeared to be a smelly, steaming, green silk stocking between her thumb and forefinger.

"Our luggage!"

Gilbert and Cordelia followed the horrified fourth year Ravenclaws onto the train. Not only did it appear that Puck and Company had located all six of the Ravenclaws' trunks from the various baggage cars in which they had been stowed, they had also opened them, and strewn the contents throughout the car, near the vents, for maximum effect.

"Um, Gordon, how long did you say this was supposed to be effective?" There was a slight shake to Bethany's voice as she gathered up blouse after green blouse that smelled remarkably like dragon dung.

"Two weeks," Gordon answered meekly.

Gil stifled a laugh, this was no way for the head boy to react, but still, it was terribly funny to see all that green underwear.

Arachne whirled on Gilbert, "Well, aren't you going to DO something?"

Gil sobered and nodded, "Of course I am. I am going to find out exactly who set off this horrid incendiary device and see to it that they receive the harshest detention possible."

The Ravenclaws stared in horror. But Gilbert realized he was quite serious. An entire train car, most of whom had never done anything to any of them, they deserved it. He didn't have to make it harsh, just long. Ravenclaws abhorred detention; Ravenclaws just did NOT GET detention.

Ravenclaws normally didn't get caught either.

"But Gilbert-"

Gil fixed Hugo with a Look. "Sorry Old Man, you got caught. You could try to appeal to Cordelia, but seeing as she IS a Slytherin, I doubt you'll find much sympathy from her for attacking an entire car full of her housemates, no matter HOW unbiased the head girl is supposed to be. We'll make sure that a carriage or two stays behind for you until you can get all packed up again. I'll make an explanation for your tardiness to Professor Ambrose and Professor Babalel. Good luck."

It really was to both their credits that Gil and Cordy managed to get into a carriage before they burst into hysterical laughter.

* * *

"Please stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"THAT! That! Do you want us to tip over?"

"It's just that with the water this clear you can see the bioluminescence of the giant squid!"

Well, it was obvious what house Isaac was going to end up in.

But for her part, Aurora Cerridwen would rather not have her first encounter with the famed Hogwarts Giant Freshwater squid to be as an appetizer.

"What's the matter Rory, can't you swim?"

Aurora looked across the boat, Isaac was seated up front, causing it to tip dreadfully whenever he peered into the water too closely, and she was sitting across from a round faced boy whose tie was crooked, Alastor, Albert, Algernon, no that was the older boy who had helped her with her trunk, who WAS that kid?

She was saved from addressing him by name by a rather large **SPLASH**.

Isaac Lightfoot, it appeared, wanted to see the giant squid first hand.

"Hey! Lightfoot's gone overboard!"

The little boats were all moving serenely towards the castle still, except one. The boat carrying two first years and Janas Heirndall made a sharp turn and headed back toward where....Alby, that was his name, Alby Jackson and Rory were hanging off the back of their boat, trying not to capsize and to pull Isaac aboard.

This was somewhat complicated by the fact that Isaac was still trying to get a look at the bloody squid.

"Hang on there lad," Janas brought his boat around next to Rory's, and instructed the two wide eyed children in the back to grab a hold of the lines on the side to keep the boats together. Janas, in a remarkable feat of balance, had one foot in one boat, one in another, and using his right arm reached down and plucked Isaac out of the water, depositing him in a sodden heap on the bottom of the boat.

"Every year," he muttered. He produced a blanket and draped it over Isaac's head, pulled out his wand and muttered something Rory couldn't understand, and removing the blanket with a flourish, Isaac was dry, if not somewhat rumpled.

"Try to stay in the boat, eh Lightfoot? Not too hard really, just don't go diving in anymore."

The boy in Janas's boat chuckled, trying to smother it behind his hand.

"I heard that Icarus, leave him be. All right Fianna, cast off, let's catch up with the others."

The girl let go, Janas pointed his wand first at Rory, Isaac, and Alby's boat, then at his own, and suddenly they weren't gliding, they were nearly flying across the lake. Rory noticed that Alby kept a restraining arm on Isaac the entire ride, and didn't let up until they reached shore.

"Up ye go now, everyone. Towards the castle....Mr. Lightfoot would you care to join us, or would you rather start school in a year or two, eh?"

Isaac Lightfoot reluctantly turned from the water and followed his future classmates up the hill.

Janas left them at the bottom of a large set of stone stairs. When they arrived at the top they were greeted by an elegant, white haired witch.

Eirene Ashtoroth quickly scanned the little group of twenty four and tried to pick out which one had had, what Janas liked to call, a "wet entry." Every year it seemed at least ONE of the first years managed to fall out of the boats. Still, tradition was tradition. Although there was that time twenty years ago when the whole fleet had blown over...Ah, it must be the rumpled boy in the back. Janas never managed to get the shoes completely dry, and THAT one was leaving damp footprints.

"Welcome to Hogwarts. I am Professor Ashtoroth, Deputy Headmistress. Now before you can be seated for the Homecoming Feast, you must be sorted into your houses. There are four houses here at Hogwarts: Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor. You will live with your housemates in the dormitories, and attend class with them as well. Your house is like your family while you are at school, and you must remember that everything you do reflects back upon it. This will be explained further in your orientation session after supper. Now, if you will wait here, I'll go see if everything is ready."

Professor Ashtoroth disappeared down the hall.

"How do they decide where you go?" The question came from the small girl from Janas's boat, Fianna, if Rory remembered correctly.

The boy standing next to her, Icarus, shrugged, "It's some kind of test, from what I heard."

"My brothers said you had to wrestle a troll, so you can pretty much eliminate it being anything like that." This from a smiling girl with blond braids and freckles.

"Why do you say that?" Rory asked.

"Because anything Rupert and Despard tell me about Hogwarts is bound to be some sort of wild fabrication. They told me that we all swam across the lake, and anyone who was caught by grindylows or the giant squid was sent home."

Alby chuckled, "Poor Isaac, you would have liked that option."

"I didn't mean to fall out you know!"

"Don't worry. All you do is sit-"

The boy with the superior expression on his face that no doubt came from already knowing what really happened in the Sorting Ceremony was cut off as Professor Ashtoroth returned.

"Follow me."

As they filed through the hall a girl leaned over to the boy, "Don't worry Cassius, it's probably lots more exciting if they don't already know."

* * *

"Sweet Merlin, were we that tiny?"

"Oh come off your high horse Jarlath, it was only a year ago."

"But still, don't they look SMALL? Like, abnormally small to you?"

"Well that one girl is pretty teeny, and skinny as well. But I mean, you never know these days..."

Violet Zobell's voice trailed away as she thought about Kathleen Connell, who was not sitting across from their Hufflepuff table with the Gryffindors this year. Kathleen, she remembered, had looked quite skinny as well when she was sorted last year. Her legs had been barely thicker than the legs of the stool she had been sitting on.

"There's also the fact that Aluicious had a freakish growth spurt over the summer and now dwarfs us all," her friend Seleny Sloan whispered in her ear.

Violet giggled, and nodded, glancing across the table to where Aluicious Daventry sat a head taller than Jarlath Yorrick and Ben Westernesse, looking every bit the long limbed and awkward youth. Fortunately, Aluicious had a sense of humor that made the fact that he looked a bit like he had been stretched on the rack for a few months not matter quite so much.

Regan Bastangle, their fellow second year, poked Violet with her elbow. "Look at that lot, those three up the front; three guesses as to which families THEY'RE from."

Violet sat up a bit to follow Regan's head tilt towards a grouping of two boys and a girl, who all looked vaguely familiar and seemed very confident of themselves.

"Three more?" Seleny groaned. "That makes fifteen!"

"Fifteen what?" Ben leaned over to figure out what was going on.

"The Roman Circus has three new acrobats," Violet glumly gestured towards the first years.

"Oh bugger." Ben sat back and bit into his last bit of candy from the train. "Their mothers must be dancing naked in the fields of Scotland right about now."

"Ben!" Jarlath smacked his friend upside the head. It wasn't Ben's fault he hadn't grown up with any guiding female influence, but still, the things that boy said sometimes, and with ladies present...

"Sorry, but honestly, can you imagine the terror that lot must inspire when they're at home?"

It was widely known around Hogwarts that the Logans, Clarks, and Parkers all lived together in an enchanted castle in Scotland. They weren't Scottish at all actually, well, not really. Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Clark, and Mr. Logan were siblings, and had grown up in the north of England. So the story went, a distant relative had died and left Mr. Logan the castle, and since there was far too much room for just he and Mrs. Logan, they had invited his sisters and their husbands to live with them. And apparently after that they had decided there was nothing to be done but to fill the castle with children, for, as Aluicious had said himself once, before being smacked by Jarlath, what else was there to do in Scotland in the winter?

The actual truth of the story was somewhat disputed, along with many details, some claiming that they had FLED to Scotland because of something that had happened in England, and there were certainly more interesting versions, but the fact was that with their current number, one in ten Hogwarts students was a member of that family, and they certainly exerted a significant amount of control over student activities. Students were still gossiping about how ONE of them hadn't managed to be head boy or girl this year, not that Gil and Cordy didn't deserve it, but, when you considered the odds...

Further down the Hufflepuff table the odds were being calculated by the sixth year boys. To take their minds off the absence of roommate Seamus O'Connor, Gwydion Goodfellow, Elliot Southington, and Algernon Northumberland had a pool going as to where various first years were going to end up. This was also tradition; they had been running the pool since third year.

"Lists to me, lists to me, the hat's almost finished!"

As the school sorting hat finished its song, lists of the known entering first years were passed in from along the Hufflepuff table as well as a few from the surrounding Ravenclaw and Gryffindors. The pool was rather substantial for the person with the most right.

Gwydion snatched a few from Algie's hands and leafed through them. "Well, if little Euripides Logan or Marcus Parker break the family convention a LOT of people are going to be down by two."

"Shhh!" Their fellow Hufflepuff sixth year Robyn Westwood had put quite a bit of her pocket money in, and she wasn't going to miss a word of the sorting.

Professor Ashtoroth was standing before the stool, with a list in her hand.

"Icarus Argo!"

A wild card, there weren't any Argos in Hogwarts, and there hadn't been for many years, so it was more or less a guess as to where he and those like him would end up.

"Gryffindor!"

Gwydion, Elliot, Algernon, Robyn, and their year-mate Morgaine Easton began to shuffle the lists furiously, marking those that had answered correctly, and organizing the lists for the next first year down the line. The girls had been up and down the train the whole ride, collecting names, and, with typical Hufflepuff diligence, had succeeded in getting them all. There were 24 names on the list, and now 23 students stood before the head table.

"Oberon Cadaver!"

"Well this won't be too exciting," Algernon looked down at his piles; only a few souls had been either intrepid or stupid enough to bet against four generations of Cadaver family legacy.

"Slytherin!"

Stupid it was. As Oberon joined his brother and sister at the far table, the lists were rearranged again for the possible outcomes of the next student.

Ethan Castor had no relatives at school, and the number of lists that had correctly placed him in Slytherin were just as few as had placed Icarus Argo in Gryffindor.

This was going to be close.

"Aurora Cerridwen!"

Morgaine put down her quill. "Get ready to stand up."

"Huh?"

"Hufflepuff!"

The sixth years joined their house in huzzah-ing the first Hufflepuff of the year.

Robyn shuffled her lists and rolled her eyes. Morgaine was the only one of them in Advanced Divination, and she had won the pool the last two years running. The only reason they let her play this year was that she agreed to share the winnings. She wasn't actually cheating, so it was all fair and square. Still, it could be downright creepy sometimes.

Fredrick Chising, another wild card, was sent off to Slytherin.

"That's three already."

"We can count for ourselves Elliot, thanks muchly."

They shuffled the papers and waited eagerly for one of the most debated sortings of the year.

"Cassius Clark!"

The Clarks did not follow the sorting pattern of the Logans and the Parkers, they went pretty much anywhere, so Cassius was almost as difficult to pick as a wild card.

"Ravenclaw!"

"Well, no Romans for us this year."

"I think Iphigenia is enough for the entire house. Imagine being in Ravenclaw, they're already full up with Parkers!"

The girls shuddered, they all had class with Julius and Augustus Parker.

"Charity Higgins!"

"No big surprises there," Algie muttered. Charity's sister Hope and brother Justus were Hufflepuff fifth and seventh years respectively.

"Gryffindor!"

"What!" They all began furiously shuffling and marking lists, only Morgaine seemed unsurprised by the break in Higgins family tradition.

However, in the next moments "Virgil Howard" followed his older sister Lilly's footsteps and was sorted into Hufflepuff. All was right with the world once again.

Alby Jackson was the oldest in his family, and as a wild card didn't cause too much of a stir when he was sorted into Gryffindor.

"Veronice Keating!"

Robyn leaned over to Morgaine, "Isn't her mother THE Mrs. Keating? The head of the Witches Aid Society?"

Morgaine nodded. "Her brother is Typhon Keating, my dad works down the hall from the nursery, apparently the child is an absolute terror."

Gwydion snickered, "I hear they wouldn't let Mrs. Keating bring him onto the train platform, they were afraid he would damage the Express."

Elliot leaned over while shuffling his papers, "Well I heard that Agnes Donnelly plastered him and 19 other children to the ceiling of the nursery over the summer."

Algernon nodded, "I believe it. My cousin Joe works in the Ex. Pot's Department, and he had to hide out in the country for a week after spreading that stuff on the floor of the Ministry lobby."

"Fergus Kirkpatrick!"

"Wait, where'd the Keating girl go?"

"Slytherin," Morgaine answered triumphantly.

"Well, that figures."

They were still discussing the Experimental Potions disaster, and whether any of that potion could be got at the school (there were some rumors that those sodding Ravenclaws had already got a hold of some) when Fergus was sent off to Gryffindor and Justin League was sorted into their own house.

"Deirdre Lawrence!"

Deirdre was a wild card, and she looked unusually happy to be sorted into Slytherin. The first year members of that house who were not legacy, and Deirdre's parents had been a Ravenclaw and a Gryffindor, usually approached the table with a degree of trepidation.

Deirdre fairly skipped over and immediately began chattering with Veronica Keating.

"Isaac Lightfoot!"

Isaac slipped on the slippery floor, created by his own leaking shoes, and had to be helped over to the stool.

"Esmerelda Cerridwen in fourth year says that he fell in the lake."

"How'd she know?"

"Apparently her little sister Rory had to help pull him out. Janus told her before he took his seat. Said the boy was trying to examine the biolumi-something of the giant squid."

"Ravenclaw!"

"Well, that explains that."

"Euripides Logan!"

"They couldn't have found a more normal sounding name?"

"I dare say she's used to the teasing by now, she HAS three brothers."

Which she joined after a few moments at the Slytherin table.

"Fianna McCarthy!"

A supremely tiny and nervous girl approached the stool and sank down upon it.

"Must be an Irish muggle born," Gwydion commented softly.

"No wonder Ambrose had them all snapped up early this summer, she looks like she'd blow away at any moment."

"Hufflepuff!"

The sixth years cheered unusually loud for Fianna, and it seemed even the first years could sense her unease; she was warmly welcomed by Rory, Virgil, and Justin.

The Ravenclaws, who seemed a bit put out at only having received two first years thus far were very happy to welcome Elspeth Morgan and Alice Mosgeil. Elspeth and Alice were, however, less than thrilled to be seated quite so close to the fourth years, which still reeked from the stench of their Express disaster and had been shunted down toward that end of the table. Cassius and Isaac didn't seem to notice, but they had already taken spots on the benches as far to the end of the table as they could get.

"Sally Murgatroyd!"

As Sally's name was announced there was some commotion, as two boys stood up in the middle of the Slytherin table and began singing some bawdy tune, of which all could be made out was "Oh my dear Sally, my dear Sally! A wench that I met in an ally..."

The girl's face turned a brilliant scarlet before Professor Ashtoroth fixed the students from her own house with a silencing look.

Of course, when Sally was sorted into Slytherin moments later, not even the deputy headmistress's fury could keep her brothers from completing the verse.

Marcus Parker, to nobody's great shock, followed in the footsteps of Arachne, Ariadne, Julius, Augustus, and Ceasar and was welcomed into Ravenclaw with no less fanfare than Sally's, although with so many voices the lyrics to the tune could not be made out at all.

"Hebe Rothschild!"

"Is she Preserved's sister?"

Preserved Rothschild, who had graduated two years past, had been the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain, Head Boy, and the first student in recorded history to have infiltrated and planted Grindylows in the Slytherin prefect's bathtub. Not that the bit about the Grindylows and the bathtub was common knowledge, of course, and in any case, it had been in perfectly reasonable retaliation to the South American fire beetles released into the fifth year Hufflepuff boys dormitory. There had been quite a bit of biological warfare going on that year, as they all recalled.

"She's a cousin, I think."

"Hufflepuff!"

"Well, if she's anything like Preserved she's got great potential."

"I'm sure she has great potential Gwydion, but I don't think anyone is exactly like Preserved."

"David Thatcher!"

"Bastian's little brother, right?"

"Yup."

"Hufflepuff!"

"I hope he doesn't walk in his sleep like Bastian, I had a devil of a time tracking him down last year."

"That's the burden you get to bear for being a prefect Gwyd."

"Abigail Vincent!"

Lists were forgotten as all heads swiveled toward the head table. It seemed, indeed, that the entire school was intensely interested in whoever was related by blood ties to Hugo Vincent.

For the most part, Abigail seemed a capable sort of girl, who held her head high under the obvious intense scrutiny, and sat down on the stool with an almost regal air.

"Gryffindor!"

"Hmm, that doesn't prove she is any less of a mischief monger than her brother."

"It could be a sign she is more so, only perhaps less devious."

"Oh leave her alone will-"

"Willimena Westing!"

Abigail Vincent may have come under close scrutiny, but at THAT name the Great Hall fell silent enough to hear a quill drop.

She was the last to be sorted, poor thing, and not looking to pleased to be up front at all.

At that moment a shrill whistle came from the back of the hall, and towards the far end of the Gryffindor table a tall boy was standing up on the table itself, waving at Willimena with a rather mischievous expression on his face, while the two girls sitting next to and across from him kept pulling at the edge of his robes. Their urgent whispering of "Wendy, for Merlin's sake, do you want to mortify her completely!" and "Get down before you embarrass her AND us," could easily be heard in the silent hall.

Wendy decided to oblige, and in getting down took a rather spectacular fall off the table, resulting in an eruption of laughter throughout the hall, as had no doubt been his object.

Willimena took advantage of the distraction to hop on the stool. Most students were still watching the antics of her cousin when she was sorted into Ravenclaw and practically sprinted to the relative anonymity of her house table.

The spectacle over, the sixth year Hufflepuffs returned to scoring their lists.

"Results?" Gwydion asked.

"I have two with 20."

"One with 21."

"Three with 22."

"One with 23."

"One with 23."

"Well I've got Miss Know It All's and she got all 24, as usual."

Robyn tossed Morgaine's list on the table, and the boys read it over, comparing it to the master list they had been keeping, just in case a scoring had been overlooked. It hadn't, Morgaine was the winner, again.

"They are never going to let us run the pool next year."

"Well, let's give a token to the two runner ups at least, that should make them happy. Congratulations Miss Easton."

Morgaine merely shrugged, and began to load her plate as the food appeared and the feast began.

Gwydion poured their glasses of pumpkin juice, and then raised his. "To Seamus."

His four year-mates did the same. "To Seamus."

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End file.
